The Relation between Black Hole Mass, Bulge Mass, and Near-Infrared Luminosity

We present new accurate near-infrared (NIR) spheroid (bulge) structural parameters obtained by a two-dimensional image analysis of all galaxies with a direct black hole (BH) mass determination. As expected, NIR bulge luminosities Lbul and BH masses are tightly correlated, and if we consider only those galaxies with a secure BH mass measurement and an accurate Lbul (27 objects), the spread of MBH-Lbul is similar to MBH-’¦Òe, where ’¦Òe is the effective stellar velocity dispersion. We find an intrinsic rms scatter of ~=0.3 dex in logMBH. By combining the bulge effective radii Re measured in our analysis with ’¦Òe, we find a tight linear correlation (rms~=0.25 dex) between MBH and the virial bulge mass (~Re’¦Ò2e), with <MBH/Mbul>~0.002. A partial correlation analysis shows that MBH depends on both ’¦Òe and Re and that both variables are necessary to drive the correlations between MBH and other bulge properties.