THE E-ELT DESIGN REFERENCE MISSION - SCIENCE CASE G9

Title

A Survey of Black Holes in Different Environments

PI

W. Freudling

Abstract

We propose to carry out a spatially resolved spectroscopic survey of the centers of elliptical and early type galaxies with very low and very high central velocity dispersions. The goal of the survey is to resolve the Sphere of Influence (SoI) of the suspected black holes (BHs) in those galaxies and thereby investigate the low and hi-mass end of the MBH-σ relation. Our sample includes galaxies in a broad range of clusters as well as field galaxies. The centers of all galaxies in our sample have previously been imaged by HST and/or JWST, and expected BH masses have been estimated based on the cusp brightness and velocity dispersion. The survey will for the first time resolve the SoI of BH with masses MBH of around 106 outside the local Universe, and at the same time yield spectroscopic data of a significant sample of the most massive BHs currently known. The survey also might discover supermassive BHs with masses of up to about 1010 Msolar.

Full proposal

v1

Report

Section 14 of the DRM report

Related presentations

DRM update, A. Küpcü Yoldas at SWG meeting, 07 Oct 2008
Science & simulations, W. Freudling at DRM workshop, 20-21 May 2008
Science case, W. Freudling at SWG DRM workshop, 29-30 May 2007

Overview (#5 in a series of popular science level 'pep talks'), M. Kissler-Patig at TPO meeting, 10 Jun 2008