WISDOM project - VII. Molecular gas measurement of the supermassive black hole mass in the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052
Journal article, 2021

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 (CO)-C-12(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 an SMBH mass of 2.5 +/- 0.3 x 10(9) M-circle dot and a stellar I-band mass-to-light ratio of 4.6 +/- 0.2 M-circle dot/L-circle dot,L-I (3 sigma confidence intervals). This SMBH mass is significantly larger than that derived using ionized gas kinematics, which however appears 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.

galaxies: kinematics and dynamics

galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD

galaxies: individual: NGC 7052

galaxies: ISM

galaxies: nuclei

Author

Mark D. Smith

University of Oxford

Martin Bureau

University of Oxford

Yonsei University

Timothy A. Davis

Cardiff University

Michele Cappellari

University of Oxford

Lijie Liu

University of Oxford

Kyoko Onishi

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics

Satoru Iguchi

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)

National Institutes of Natural Sciences

North

Cardiff University

Marc Sarzi

Armagh Observatory and Planetarium

Thomas G. Williams

Cardiff University

Max Planck Society

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

0035-8711 (ISSN) 1365-2966 (eISSN)

Vol. 503 4 5984-5996

Subject Categories

Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stab791

More information

Latest update

6/21/2021