WISDOM project - VII. Molecular gas measurement of the supermassive black hole mass in the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052

Smith, Mark D., Bureau, Martin, Davis, Timothy A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4932-9379, Cappellari, Michele, Liu, Lijie, Onishi, Kyoko, Iguchi, Satoru, North, Eve V., Sarzi, Marc and Williams, Thomas G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1710-3914 2021. WISDOM project - VII. Molecular gas measurement of the supermassive black hole mass in the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 503 (4) , pp. 5984-5996. 10.1093/mnras/stab791

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Abstract

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses can be measured by resolving the dynamical influences of the SMBHs on tracers of the central potentials. Modern long-baseline interferometers have enabled the use of molecular gas as such a tracer. We present here Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052 at 0′′.11 (37 pc) resolution in the 12CO(2-1) line and 1.3 mm continuum emission. This resolution is sufficient to resolve the region in which the potential is dominated by the SMBH. We forward model these observations, using a multi-Gaussian expansion of a Hubble Space Telescope F814W image and a spatially-constant mass-to-light ratio to model the stellar mass distribution. We infer a SMBH mass of 2.5 ± 0.3 × 109 M⊙ and a stellar I-band mass-to-light ratio of 4.6 ± 0.2 M⊙/L⊙, I (3σ confidence intervals). This SMBH mass is significantly larger than that derived using ionised gas kinematics, which however appear significantly more kinematically disturbed than the molecular gas. We also show that a central molecular gas deficit is likely to be the result of tidal disruption of molecular gas clouds due to the strong gradient in the central gravitational potential.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Additional Information:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0035-8711
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 March 2021
Date of Acceptance:	15 March 2021
Last Modified:	24 May 2023 18:32
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/140020

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