MASS OF THE SOUTHERN BLACK HOLE IN NGC 6240 FROM LASER GUIDE STAR ADAPTIVE OPTICS

NGC 6240 is a pair of colliding disk galaxies, each with a black hole in its core. We have used laser guide star adaptive optics on the Keck II telescope to obtain high-resolution (∼0.″06) near-infrared integral-field spectra of the region surrounding the supermassive black hole in the south nucleus of this galaxy merger. We use the K-band CO absorption bandheads to trace stellar kinematics. We obtain a spatial resolution of about 20 pc and thus directly resolve the sphere of gravitational influence of the massive black hole. We explore two different methods to measure the black hole mass. Using a Jeans Axisymmetric Multi-Gaussian mass model, we investigate the limit that a relaxed mass distribution produces all of the measured velocity dispersion, and find an upper limit on the black hole mass at 2.0 ± 0.2 × 109 M☉. When assuming the young stars whose spectra we observe remain in a thin disk, we compare Keplerian velocity fields to the measured two-dimensional velocity field and fit for a mass profile containing a black hole point mass plus a radially varying spherical component, which suggests a lower limit for the black hole mass of 8.7 ± 0.3 × 108 M☉. Our measurements of the stellar velocity dispersion place this active galactic nucleus within the scatter of the MBH–σ* relation. As NGC 6240 is a merging system, this may indicate that the relation is preserved during a merger at least until the final coalescence of the two nuclei.