Counting the Unseen. I. Nuclear Density Scaling Relations for Nucleated Galaxies

The volumetric rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs) encodes information on the still-unknown demographics of central massive black holes (MBHs) in low-mass galaxies (≲10 9 M ⊙ ). Theoretical TDE rates from model galaxy samples can extract this information, but this requires accurately defining the...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astronomical journal 2024-09, Vol.168 (3), p.137
Main Authors: Hannah, Christian H., Seth, Anil C., Stone, Nicholas C., van Velzen, Sjoert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Black holes
Density
Galaxies
Scaling relations
Star clusters
Stars & galaxies
Stellar mass
Tidal disruption
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The volumetric rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs) encodes information on the still-unknown demographics of central massive black holes (MBHs) in low-mass galaxies (≲10 9 M ⊙ ). Theoretical TDE rates from model galaxy samples can extract this information, but this requires accurately defining the nuclear stellar density structures. This region is typically dominated by nuclear star clusters (NSCs), which have been shown to increase TDE rates by orders of magnitude. Thus, we assemble the largest available sample of parsec-scale 3D density profiles that include NSC components. We deproject the point-spread-function-deconvolved surface-brightness profiles of 91 nearby galaxies of varying morphology and combine these with nuclear mass-to-light ratios estimated from measured colors or spectral synthesis to create 3D mass density profiles. We fit the inner 3D density profile to find the best-fit power-law density profile in each galaxy. We compile this information as a function of galaxy stellar mass to fit new empirical density scaling relations. These fits reveal positive correlations between galaxy stellar mass and central stellar density in both early- and late-type galaxies. We find that early-type galaxies have somewhat higher densities and shallower profiles relative to late-type galaxies at the same mass. We also use the density profiles to estimate the influence radius of each galaxy’s MBH and find that the sphere of influence was likely resolved in most cases. These new relations will be used in future works to build mock galaxy samples for dynamical TDE rate calculations, with the aim of constraining MBH demographics in low-mass galaxies.
ISSN:0004-6256
1538-3881
DOI:10.3847/1538-3881/ad630a