The largest black holes and the most luminous galaxies

Hagai Netzer*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

78 Scopus citations

Abstract

The empirical relationship between the broad-line region size and the source luminosity in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is used to obtain black hole (BH) masses for a large number of quasars in three samples. The largest black hole masses exceed 1010 M and are found to occur in the objects with the highest luminosities. Such BH masses, when converted to galaxy bulge mass and luminosity, indicate masses in excess of 1013 M and σ* in excess of 700 km s -1. Such massive galaxies have never been observed. The largest BHs reside, almost exclusively, in high-redshift quasars. All this is inconsistent with several suggested scenarios of BH and galaxy formation. Possible ways out are that either the observed size-luminosity relationship in low-luminosity AGNs does not extend to very high luminosity or else the MBH-M bulge* correlations observed in the local universe do not reflect the relation between those quantities at the epoch of galaxy formation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)L5-L8
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume583
Issue number1 II
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 Jan 2003

Funding

FundersFunder number
Israel Science Foundation545/00

    Keywords

    • Black hole physics
    • Galaxies: active
    • Galaxies: high-redshift
    • Galaxies: nuclei
    • Quasars: general

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'The largest black holes and the most luminous galaxies'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this