Supermassive black holes in peculiar galaxies

Supermassive black holes reside in the centres of all normal nearby galaxies. Their masses correlate strongly with several properties of the host galaxy, such as the bulge velocity dispersion and the bulge luminosity. This shows that galaxy evolution and black hole growth must be strongly linked. It remains an open question whether these correlations are also valid for galaxies at the extreme low and high-mass ends, galaxies with a pseudobulge and merger remnants. Nina Nowak measured supermassive black hole masses in the centres of four such galaxies using stellar dynamics. All measurements are based on observations with the adaptive-optics assisted, near-infrared integral-field spectrograph SINFONI at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal, Chile. The results imply that the bulge velocity dispersion is always a good indicator of the central black hole mass, independent of galaxy type. The bulge luminosity, however, only seems to be a good mass inidicator for old classical bulges.