Bibcode
Ferré-Mateu, A.; Mezcua, M.; Trujillo, I.; Balcells, M.; van den Bosch, R. C. E.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 808, Issue 1, article id. 79, 10 pp. (2015).
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7
2015
Journal
Citations
67
Refereed citations
65
Description
We study a sample of eight massive galaxies that are extreme outliers
(3–5σ) in the {M}\bullet ‑
Mbulge local scaling relation. Two of these galaxies are
confirmed to host extremely large super-massive black holes (SMBHs),
whereas the virial mass estimates for the other six are also consistent
with having abnormally large SMBHs. From the analysis of their star
formation histories and their structural properties, we find that all of
these extreme outliers can be considered to be relic galaxies from the
early (z ∼ 2) universe: i.e., they are compact (R
{}{{e}}\lt 2 kpc) and have purely old stellar populations
(t≳ 10 Gyr). In order to explain the nature of such deviations from
the local relations, we propose a scenario in which the hosts of these
über-massive SMBHs are galaxies that have followed a different
evolutionary path than the two-phase growth channel assumed for massive
galaxies. Once the SMBH and the core of the galaxy are formed at z ∼
2, the galaxy skips the second phase, remaining structurally untouched
and without further mass and size increase. We show that if the outliers
had followed the normal evolutionary path by growing in size via merger
activity, the expected (mild) growth in mass would place them closer to
the observed local relations. Our results suggest that the SMBH growth
epoch for the most massive galaxies stopped ∼10 Gyr ago.
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