Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies

Understand

We review the observed demographics and inferred evolution of supermassive black holes (BHs) found by dynamical modeling of spatially resolved kinematics.

• Most influential was the discovery of a tight correlation between BH mass and the velocity dispersion of the host-galaxy bulge.
• It and other correlations led to the belief that BHs and bulges coevolve by regulating each other's growth.
• New results are now replacing this simple story with a richer and more plausible picture in which BHs correlate differently with different galaxy components.