Weighing the Most Massive Black Holes in the Local Universe

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The largest galaxies in the universe, the so-called BCGs, are the brightest members of rich galaxy clusters, and are suspected of harboring the most massive black holes in their centers. Accurately measuring the masses of these black holes is confounded by the distances to, and the low surface brightnesses of, their host galaxies. The PI and co-PI of this project will employ laser-guide-star adaptive optics systems and integral field spectrographs on the 8-meter Gemini-North and the 10-meter Keck telescopes to obtain 2-dimensional maps of the stellar kinematic fields in 9 BCGs at unprecedented resolution. Then, using orbit superposition models, they will fit the data and constrain the masses of the putative central dark objects. The results of this study will clarify the co-evolution of galaxies and black holes by mergers at the high end of the mass scale, and will have important implications for the role of black-hole driven energy injection (feedback) in galaxy clusters. A graduate student will be trained in forefront observational techniques and stellar dynamical modeling methods.