The supermassive black hole mass - S\'ersic index relations for bulges and elliptical galaxies

Understand

Scaling relations between supermassive black hole mass, M_BH, and host galaxy properties are a powerful instrument for studying their coevolution.

• A complete picture involving all of the black hole scaling relations, in which each relation is consistent with the others, is necessary to fully understand the black hole-galaxy connection.
• The relation between M_BH and the central light concentration of the surrounding bulge, quantified by the S\'ersic index n, may be one of the simplest and strongest such relations, requiring only uncalibrated galaxy images.
• We have conducted a census of literature S\'ersic index measurements for a sample of 54 local galaxies with directly measured M_BH values.