Speaker
Description
Supermassive black holes (SMBH) are believed to co-evolve with their host galaxies. Evidence for this coevolution is found in the form of several correlations between the SMBH mass and various properties of the host galaxy, the tightest of which is the bulge stellar velocity dispersion (e.g., Ferrarese & Merritt 2000). To better understand these correlations, a large and robust dataset of SMBH measurements is required, particularly in the low- and high-mass regime where measurements are still relatively few. In this talk, I present the results of a mass measurement of the putative SMBH in the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2513. The measurement was obtained via the method of cold molecular gas dynamics (Davis et al. 2013) using high resolution ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array) observations. I briefly introduce the method and then present how I derived the luminous mass using near-infrared images fromm the Hubble Space Telescope, taking dust masking into account and noting that an accurate knowledge of the galaxy’s luminous mass is crucial towards obtaining a precise SMBH mass measurement. I subsequently explain how I combined different 12CO(2-1) ALMA observations to obtain the highest possible resolution at a sufficient sensitivity. Finally, I discuss the modelling of the resulting ALMA datacube with the KINematic Molecular Simulation (KinMS) routines developed by Davis et al. (2012) to obtain a best-fit model and SMBH mass. I conclude by examining my results with respect to the correlation mentioned above and discuss outlooks for this project and future study in the field.