|
Description
We present a multiwavelength study of the active galactic nucleus in the nearby (D=14.1Mpc) low-mass galaxy IC750, which has circumnuclear 22GHz water maser emission. The masers trace a nearly edge-on, warped disk ~0.2pc in diameter, coincident with the compact nuclear X-ray source that lies at the base of the ~kiloparsec-scale extended X-ray emission. The position-velocity structure of the maser emission indicates that the central black hole (BH) has a mass less than 1.4x105M{sun}. Keplerian rotation curves fitted to these data yield enclosed masses between 4.1x104M{sun} and 1.4x105M{sun}, with a mode of 7.2x104M{sun}. Fitting the optical spectrum, we measure a nuclear stellar velocity dispersion {sigma }*=110.7_-13.4_^+12.1^km/s. From near-infrared photometry, we fit a bulge mass of (7.3{+/-}2.7)x108M{sun} and a stellar mass of 1.4x1010M{sun}. The mass upper limit of the intermediate-mass BH in IC750 falls roughly two orders of magnitude below the MBH-{sigma}* relation and roughly one order of magnitude below the MBH-MBulge and MBH-M* relations-larger than the relations' intrinsic scatters of 0.58{+/-}0.09dex, 0.69dex, and 0.65{+/-}0.09dex, respectively. These offsets could be due to larger scatter at the low-mass end of these relations. Alternatively, BH growth is intrinsically inefficient in galaxies with low bulge and/or stellar masses, which causes the BHs to be undermassive relative to their hosts, as predicted by some galaxy evolution simulations.
|
