2 research outputs found
VLT Diffraction Limited Imaging and Spectroscopy in the NIR: Weighing the black hole in Centaurus A with NACO
We present high spatial resolution near-infrared spectra and images of the
nucleus of Centaurus A (NGC 5128) obtained with NAOS-CONICA at the VLT. The
adaptive optics corrected data have a spatial resolution of 0.06" (FWHM) in K-
and 0.11" in H-band, four times higher than previous studies. The observed gas
motions suggest a kinematically hot disk which is orbiting a central object and
is oriented nearly perpendicular to the nuclear jet. We model the central
rotation and velocity dispersion curves of the [FeII] gas orbiting in the
combined potential of the stellar mass and the (dominant) black hole. Our
physically most plausible model, a dynamically hot and geometrically thin gas
disk, yields a black hole mass of M_bh = (6.1 +0.6/-0.8) 10^7 M_sun. As the
physical state of the gas is not well understood, we also consider two limiting
cases: first a cold disk model, which completely neglects the velocity
dispersion; it yields an M_bh estimate that is almost two times lower. The
other extreme case is to model a spherical gas distribution in hydrostatic
equilibrium through Jeans equation. Compared to the hot disk model the best-fit
black hole mass increases by a factor of 1.5. This wide mass range spanned by
the limiting cases shows how important the gas physics is even for high
resolution data. Our overall best-fitting black hole mass is a factor of 2-4
lower than previous measurements. With our revised M_bh estimate, Cen A's
offset from the M_bh-sigma relation is significantly reduced; it falls above
this relation by a factor of ~2, which is close to the intrinsic scatter of
this relation. (Abridged)Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures, including minor changes following the referee
report; accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa
Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray production in the polar cap regions of black hole magnetospheres
We develop a model of ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) production via
acceleration in a rotation-induced electric field in vacuum gaps in the
magnetospheres of supermassive black holes (BH). We show that if the poloidal
magnetic field near the BH horizon is misaligned with the BH rotation axis,
charged particles, which initially spiral into the BH hole along the equatorial
plane, penetrate into the regions above the BH "polar caps" and are ejected
with high energies to infinity. We show that in such a model acceleration of
protons near a BH of typical mass 3e8 solar masses is possible only if the
magnetic field is almost aligned with the BH rotation axis. We find that the
power of anisotropic electromagnetic emission from an UHECR source near a
supermassive BH should be at least 10-100 times larger then UHECR power of the
source. This implies that if the number of UHECR sources within the 100 Mpc
sphere is ~100, the power of electromagnetic emission which accompanies proton
acceleration in each source, erg/s, is comparable to the typical
luminosities of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the local Universe. We also
explore the acceleration of heavy nuclei, for which the constraints on the
electromagnetic luminosity and on the alignment of magnetic field in the gap
are relaxed