Bibcode
DOI
O'Dowd, Matthew; Urry, C. Megan; Scarpa, Riccardo
Referencia bibliográfica
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 580, Issue 1, pp. 96-103.
Fecha de publicación:
11
2002
Revista
Número de citas
36
Número de citas referidas
29
Descripción
We have studied the host galaxies of a sample of radio-loud active
galactic nuclei (AGNs) spanning more than 4 decades in the energy output
of the nucleus. The core sample includes 40 low-power sources (BL Lac
objects) and 22 high-power sources (radio-loud quasars) spanning the
redshift range 0.15<~z<~0.5, all imaged with the high spatial
resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. All of the sources are found
to lie in luminous elliptical galaxies, which follow the Kormendy
relation for normal ellipticals. A very shallow trend is detected
between nuclear brightness (corrected for beaming) and host galaxy
luminosity. Black hole masses are estimated for the entire sample, using
both the bulge luminosity-black hole mass and the velocity
dispersion-black hole mass relations for local galaxies. The latter
involves a new method using the host galaxy morphological parameters
μe and re to infer the velocity dispersion
σ via the fundamental plane correlation. Both methods indicate
that the entire sample of radio-loud AGNs are powered by very massive
central black holes, with MBH~108-1010
Msolar. Eddington ratios range from
L/LEdd~2×10-4 to ~1, with the high-power
sources having higher Eddington ratios than the low-power sources.
Overall, radio-loud AGNs appear to span a very large range in accretion
efficiency, which is all but independent of the mass of the host galaxy.