Intermediate-mass black holes and the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion
ABSTRACT

We present new 5 GHz Very Large Array observations of a sample of eight active intermediate-mass black holes with masses 104.9 M⊙ < M < 106.1 M⊙ found in galaxies with stellar masses M* < 3 × 109 M⊙. We detected five of the eight sources at high significance. Of the detections, four were consistent with a point source, and one (SDSS J095418.15+471725.1, with black hole mass M < 105 M⊙) clearly shows extended emission that has a jet morphology. Combining our new radio data with the black hole masses and literature X-ray measurements, we put the sources on the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion. We find that the extent to which the sources agree with the Fundamental Plane depends on their star-forming/composite/active galactic nucleus (AGN) classification based on optical narrow emission-line ratios. The single star-forming source is inconsistent with the Fundamental Plane. The three composite sources are consistent, and three of the four AGN sources are inconsistent with the Fundamental Plane. We argue that this inconsistency is genuine and not a result of misattributing star formation to black hole activity. Instead, we identify the sources in our sample that have AGN-like optical emission-line ratios as not following the Fundamental Plane and thus caution more »

Authors:
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10373291
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume:
516
Issue:
4
Page Range or eLocation-ID:
p. 6123-6131
ISSN:
0035-8711
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
National Science Foundation
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