Carmit Gordon Lahav, Yohai Meiron, Noam Soker
We examine the scatter in the correlation between black hole masses and their
host bulge masses, and find that the increase of the scatter with mass suggests
that mergers alone cannot produce the observed correlation. A simple merger
scenario of small galaxies leads to a proportionality relation between the
late-time black hole and bulge masses, with intrinsic scatter increasing along
the ridge line of the relation as the square root of the mass. By examining a
sample of 87 galaxies, we find that the scatter increases with mass more
rapidly than expected from the merger-only explanation. We do not dispute that
mergers play a role, but our results favour a universal feedback mechanism that
works on all scales. We discuss the possibility that the feedback mechanism
that operated during galaxy formation involved the presence of a cooling flow.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0782
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