Kavli Affiliate: Luis C. Ho
| First 5 Authors: Jared R. Davidson, Benjamin D. Boizelle, Jonelle L. Walsh, Aaron J. Barth, Emma Rasmussen
| Summary:
Dusty circumnuclear disks (CNDs) in luminous early-type galaxies (ETGs) show
regular, dynamically cold molecular gas kinematics. For a growing number of
ETGs, Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) CO imaging and
detailed gas-dynamical modeling facilitate moderate-to-high precision black
hole (BH) mass ($M_{BH}$) determinations. From the ALMA archive, we identified
a subset of 26 ETGs with estimated $M_{BH}/M_{odot} gtrsim 10^8$ to a few
$times$10$^9$ and clean CO kinematics but that previously did not have
sufficiently high angular resolution near-IR observations to mitigate dust
obscuration when constructing stellar luminosity models. We present new optical
and near-IR Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of this sample to supplement
the archival HST data, detailing the sample properties and data analysis
techniques. After masking the most apparent dust features, we measure stellar
surface brightness profiles and model the luminosities using the multi-Gaussian
expansion (MGE) formalism. Some of these MGEs have already been used in CO
dynamical modeling efforts to secure quality mbh determinations, and the
remaining ETG targets here are expected to significantly improve the high-mass
end of the current BH census, facilitating new scrutiny of local BH mass-host
galaxy scaling relationships. We also explore stellar isophotal behavior and
general dust properties, finding these CNDs generally become optically thick in
the near-IR ($A_H gtrsim 1$ mag). These CNDs are typically well-aligned with
the larger-scale stellar photometric axes with a few notable exceptions.
Uncertain dust impact on the MGE often dominates the BH mass error budget, so
extensions of this work will focus on constraining CND dust attenuation.
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