Direct measures of black hole masses through cosmic time
Abstract
Supermassive black holes (BHs) are thought to reside in all massive galaxies. They play a fundamental role in shaping galaxy evolution by suppressing star formation and halting the stellar growth of the most massive galaxies via feedback mechanisms. However, to date, measuring even their most basic property, their mass, is still challenging. The mass of BHs carries information on the growth history and the mutual interplay with the host galaxy. Uncertain BH masses leave many key questions on galaxy evolution wide open. Here we show that a transformational facility such as ALMA2040 would open a new window to measure BH mass by directly observing the kinematics of cold gas in galaxy cores from the local Universe up to very high redshift, irrespective of BH activity. This would revolutionise our understanding of BH formation, growth, and their role within galaxy evolution.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{decarli2026direct,
title = {{Direct measures of black hole masses through cosmic time}},
author = {Roberto Decarli and Sabine Thater and Ivan Delvecchio and Marcel Neeleman and Ilaria Ruffa and Hannah Stacey and Miguel Pereira-Santaella and Dieu Nguyen and Elena Bertola and Francoise Combes and Tanio Diaz-Santos and Carlotta Gruppioni and Alvaro Labiano and Isabella Lamperti and Chiara Mazzucchelli and Antonio Pensabene and Mamta Pandey-Pommier and Francesca Pozzi and Francesco Salvestrini},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.21524},
eprint = {2610.21524},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21524},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Direct measures of black hole masses through cosmic time
AU - Roberto Decarli
AU - Sabine Thater
AU - Ivan Delvecchio
AU - Marcel Neeleman
AU - Ilaria Ruffa
AU - Hannah Stacey
AU - Miguel Pereira-Santaella
AU - Dieu Nguyen
AU - Elena Bertola
AU - Francoise Combes
AU - Tanio Diaz-Santos
AU - Carlotta Gruppioni
AU - Alvaro Labiano
AU - Isabella Lamperti
AU - Chiara Mazzucchelli
AU - Antonio Pensabene
AU - Mamta Pandey-Pommier
AU - Francesca Pozzi
AU - Francesco Salvestrini
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.21524
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21524
AB - Supermassive black holes (BHs) are thought to reside in all massive galaxies. They play a fundamental role in shaping galaxy evolution by suppressing star formation and halting the stellar growth of the most massive galaxies via feedback mechanisms. However, to date, measuring even their most basic property, their mass, is still challenging. The mass of BHs carries information on the growth history and the mutual interplay with the host galaxy. Uncertain BH masses leave many key questions on galaxy evolution wide open. Here we show that a transformational facility such as ALMA2040 would open a new window to measure BH mass by directly observing the kinematics of cold gas in galaxy cores from the local Universe up to very high redshift, irrespective of BH activity. This would revolutionise our understanding of BH formation, growth, and their role within galaxy evolution.
ER -