Austrian Early Career Conference 2024

Contribution:
Poster

Authors:
Shelley-Anne Harrisberg

Affiliations:
Department of Astrophysics, University of Vienna

Title:
A high precision mass measurement of the central black hole in the massive elliptical NGC 2513 with ALMA molecular gas dynamics

Abstract:
Supermassive black holes (SMBH) are believed to co-evolve with their host galaxies. Evidence for the co-evolution is found in the form of several tight correlations between the SMBH mass and various properties of the host galaxy, such as bulge stellar velocity dispersion (Ferrarese & Merritt 2000). In order to better understand the correlations more SMBH measurements are required in the low- and high-mass SMBH regime.
In this talk, I present my results of a SMBH mass measurement in the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2513 obtained from cold molecular gas dynamics (Davis et al. 2013), using high resolution ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array) observations.
I will first discuss the method, its advantages and its limitations.
Knowing the luminous mass of the galaxy is crucial for a precise SMBH mass measurement. I will then present how I derived the luminous mass of NGC 2513 using near-infrared images from the Hubble Space Telescope taking detailed dust masking into account.
In the final part of my talk, I will present kinematic maps obtained from the high-resolution observations (0.369"×0.325") of the CO(2-1) lines obtained from ALMA.
These are then modeled using the KInMS (KINematic Molecular Simulation) routines developed by Davis et al. (2013). Applying the best-fit model to the ALMA data, the SMBH mass and its limits can finally be constrained.