{
  "id": "1606.00018",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2016-05-31T20:00:37.000Z",
  "updated": "2016-05-31T20:00:37.000Z",
  "title": "Megamaser Disks Reveal a Broad Distribution of Black Hole Mass in Spiral Galaxies",
  "authors": [
    "Jenny E. Greene",
    "Anil C. Seth",
    "Minjin Kim",
    "Ronald Laesker",
    "Andy D. Goulding",
    "Feng Gao",
    "James A. Braatz",
    "Christian Henkel",
    "James Condon",
    "Fred K. Y. Lo",
    "Wei Zhao"
  ],
  "comment": "6 pages, 4 figures, resubmitted after referee's comments",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.GA"
  ],
  "abstract": "We use new precision measurements of black hole masses from water megamaser disks to investigate scaling relations between macroscopic galaxy properties and supermassive black hole (BH) mass. The megamaser-derived BH masses span 10^6-10^8 M_sun, while all the galaxy properties that we examine (including stellar mass, central mass density, central velocity dispersion) lie within a narrow range. Thus, no galaxy property correlates tightly with M_BH in ~L* spiral galaxies. Of them all, stellar velocity dispersion provides the tightest relation, but at fixed sigma* the mean megamaser M_BH are offset by -0.6+/-0.1 dex relative to early-type galaxies. Spiral galaxies with non-maser dynamical BH masses do not show this offset. At low mass, we do not yet know the full distribution of BH mass at fixed galaxy property; the non-maser dynamical measurements may miss the low-mass end of the BH distribution due to inability to resolve the spheres of influence and/or megamasers may preferentially occur in lower-mass BHs.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2016-05-31T20:00:37.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "black hole mass",
      "spiral galaxies",
      "megamaser disks reveal",
      "broad distribution",
      "galaxy property"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 6,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}