A supermassive black hole fundamental plane for ellipticals

Abstract

We obtain the coefficients of a new fundamental plane for supermassive black holes at the centers of elliptical galaxies, involving measured central black hole mass and photometric parameters that define the light distribution. The galaxies are tightly distributed around this mass fundamental plane, with improvement in the rms residual over those obtained from the M_BH - σ and M_BH-L relations. This implies a strong multidimensional link between central massive black hole formation and global photometric properties of elliptical galaxies, and provides an improved estimate of black hole mass from galaxy data.