Observational evidence for a connection between supermassive black holes and dark matter haloes

Maarten Baes, Pieter Buyle, George K. T. Hau, Herwig Dejonghe

Published 2003-03-28, updated 2003-04-08Version 2

We present new velocity dispersion measurements of sample of 12 spiral galaxies for which extended rotation curves are available. These data are used to refine a recently discovered correlation between the circular velocity and the central velocity dispersion of spiral galaxies. We find a slightly steeper slope for our larger sample, we confirm the negligible intrinsic scatter on this correlation, and we find a striking agreement with a corresponding relation for elliptical galaxies. We combine this correlation with the well-known MBH-sigma relation to obtain a tight correlation between the circular velocities of galaxies and the masses of the supermassive black holes they host. This correlation is the observational evidence for an intimate link between dark matter haloes and supermassive black holes. Apart from being an important ingredient for theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution, the relation between MBH and circular velocity can serve as a practical tool to estimate black hole masses in spiral galaxies.