Black holes in high and low mass bulges and bulge-less galaxies

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This is a project to detect super massive black holes (SMBH) and measure their masses at the centers of galaxies with pseudo-bulges, very low- or high mass bulges or bulge-less galaxies using the NIR spectrograph SINFONI at the ESO VLT with Adaptive Optics. Over the past decade we have learned that probably all ellipticals and bulges contain central SMBH. SMBH masses correlate well with the (luminosities, and therefore stellar) masses of the bulges harboring them, with about 0.15% of the bulge mass being found in the SMBH. In addition, there exists a very strong correlation of SMBH mass with the velocity dispersion of the bulge. With the present project we want to investigate whether these relations remain valid, or how they change, when galaxies with pseudo-bulges, very low- or very high-mass bulges or bulge-less galaxies are considered. These object classes are of particular importance if we want to understand (a) how secular evolution and merging influence the growth of black holes, (b) whether seed black holes may exist in low-σ galaxies, (c) whether high-mass ellipticals have much larger black holes than the rest, therefore explaining the existence of the extremely bright quasars at high redshifts. With our investment of 20 SINFONI nights, at the end of the project we will have measured black holes masses in more than 20 galaxies and be in a position to settle these questions.