Astromeeting 21 Dec 2022 by Ilaria Ruffa
Speaker: Ilaria Ruffa
TITLE: The WISDOM project: measuring accurate SMBH masses from CO dynamical modelling
ABSTRACT: The mass of super-massive black holes (SMBHs) has been observed to correlate with a number of properties of their host galaxies, suggesting that the two may
co-evolve in a self-regulating manner. Our understanding of this process, however, is still highly incomplete. A key issue is gathering accurate SMBH masses for large numbers of varied objects. The most reliable measurements can be obtained through dynamical studies of matter orbiting within the gravitational sphere of influence (SOI) of the SMBH. Method used so far includes modelling the stellar, ionised gas, and maser kinematics. Each of these techniques, however, have limited applications. In recent times, thanks to the resolution and sensitivity provided by the latest generation of (sub-)millimeter interferometers, a new method has been developed: probing the Keplerian motions of the molecular gas down to the SOI using CO emission lines. In this talk, I will discuss the successful application of this technique in the context of the mm-Wave Interferometric Survey of Dark Object Masses (WISDOM) project, which has the primary aim of carrying out high-precision SMBH mass measurements using high-resolution CO observations mainly from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). In particular, I will focus on recent results obtained on two sample objects with very different types of nuclear activity and SMBH masses (NGC 1574 and NGC 4261), showing the enormous potential of this technique in underpinning our understanding of the overall SMBH-host galaxy scaling relations.