The black hole-galaxy correlations of the 12 micron local AGN sample: a NuSTAR perspective
Abstract
The M-sigma correlation of inactive galaxies plays a crucial role in estimating the black hole mass (MBH) in active galactic nuclei (AGN): 1) it is used to calibrate the reverberation mapping (RM) method; 2) the RM is the basis of the single epoch method, the most-used technique to determine MBH of broad-line AGN; and 3) in narrow-line AGN, MBH is often directly inferred from the M-sigma correlation. The main goal of this work is to test whether the M-sigma relation calibrated from inactive galaxies can be reliably applied to a local AGN population spanning Seyfert 1, Seyfert 2, and hidden broad-line region galaxies (HBLRs), and whether the resulting AGN relation has sufficient predictive power to be used as an indirect MBH estimator. To investigate this hypothesis, we used the 12 micron AGN sample, a local representative and largely unbiased sample. Since a substantial fraction of this sample has good-quality NuSTAR data, we estimated their MBH with the X-ray scaling method, which works for any AGN accreting at moderate or high level. We find that the M-sigma correlation of the 12 micron AGN sample is different from the one obtained with inactive galaxies and has a substantial scatter. Therefore, its predictive power for MBH estimates is fairly limited. We also find that the MBH-Mgal correlation based on the 12 micron AGN sample is consistent with the analogous correlation obtained from a large sample of nearby type 1 AGN and inconsistent with that of inactive galaxies. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that Seyfert 1 and HBLRs have similar and systematically higher Eddington ratios than Seyfert 2 galaxies.
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BibTeX
@misc{gliozzi2026black,
title = {{The black hole-galaxy correlations of the 12 micron local AGN sample: a NuSTAR perspective}},
author = {M. Gliozzi and L. Spinoglio and J. A. Fernandez-Ontiveros and M. A. Malkan and J. K. Williams and M. Young. A. D. Oxley and S. Satyapal},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.30285},
eprint = {2610.30285},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30285},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The black hole-galaxy correlations of the 12 micron local AGN sample: a NuSTAR perspective
AU - M. Gliozzi
AU - L. Spinoglio
AU - J. A. Fernandez-Ontiveros
AU - M. A. Malkan
AU - J. K. Williams
AU - M. Young. A. D. Oxley
AU - S. Satyapal
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.30285
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30285
AB - The M-sigma correlation of inactive galaxies plays a crucial role in estimating the black hole mass (MBH) in active galactic nuclei (AGN): 1) it is used to calibrate the reverberation mapping (RM) method; 2) the RM is the basis of the single epoch method, the most-used technique to determine MBH of broad-line AGN; and 3) in narrow-line AGN, MBH is often directly inferred from the M-sigma correlation. The main goal of this work is to test whether the M-sigma relation calibrated from inactive galaxies can be reliably applied to a local AGN population spanning Seyfert 1, Seyfert 2, and hidden broad-line region galaxies (HBLRs), and whether the resulting AGN relation has sufficient predictive power to be used as an indirect MBH estimator. To investigate this hypothesis, we used the 12 micron AGN sample, a local representative and largely unbiased sample. Since a substantial fraction of this sample has good-quality NuSTAR data, we estimated their MBH with the X-ray scaling method, which works for any AGN accreting at moderate or high level. We find that the M-sigma correlation of the 12 micron AGN sample is different from the one obtained with inactive galaxies and has a substantial scatter. Therefore, its predictive power for MBH estimates is fairly limited. We also find that the MBH-Mgal correlation based on the 12 micron AGN sample is consistent with the analogous correlation obtained from a large sample of nearby type 1 AGN and inconsistent with that of inactive galaxies. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that Seyfert 1 and HBLRs have similar and systematically higher Eddington ratios than Seyfert 2 galaxies.
ER -