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Gas Disks and Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Radio Galaxies

Gas Disks and Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Radio Galaxies

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for the gravitational potential from the stars <strong>and</strong> prospective nuclear black holes <strong>in</strong><br />

each galaxy.<br />

In this chapter we present the techniques used to create model velocity profiles<br />

for each set of observations <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the stars, <strong>and</strong> black holes with masses of 0,<br />

1 × 10 8 M⊙ <strong>and</strong> 9 × 10 8 M⊙. We go on to discuss the models for each galaxy <strong>and</strong><br />

compare the predicted k<strong>in</strong>ematic signatures <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the presence of supermassive<br />

black holes to the observed gas velocity profiles presented <strong>in</strong> Chapter 3.<br />

An important drawback of the approach of measur<strong>in</strong>g black hole masses by us<strong>in</strong>g<br />

gas k<strong>in</strong>ematics is that the gas dynamics may be affected by many non-gravitational<br />

sources <strong>and</strong> the gravitational motions may not be settled <strong>in</strong>to a coplanar th<strong>in</strong> disk.<br />

We describe any such motions as ‘unsettled’. In §4.4.3 we will discuss some non-<br />

gravitational sources of k<strong>in</strong>etic energy <strong>in</strong> the gas <strong>and</strong> the consequences of unsettled<br />

motions for the determ<strong>in</strong>ation of black hole masses. We do not produce model fits for<br />

each galaxy because, as we will see, a large proportion of the gas motion can not be<br />

described by simple circular-th<strong>in</strong>-disk rotation, render<strong>in</strong>g such fits difficult constra<strong>in</strong><br />

<strong>and</strong> impossible to <strong>in</strong>terpret mean<strong>in</strong>gfully.<br />

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