The most massive galaxies with large depleted cores: structural parameter relations and black hole masses

Abstract

[Abridged] Luminous spheroids (M_V < - 21.50 +- 0.75 mag) contain partially depleted cores with sizes (R_ b) typically 0.02 - 0.5 kpc. However, galaxies with R_b > 0.5 kpc are rare and poorly understood. Here we perform detailed decompositions of the composite surface brightness profiles, extracted from archival Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based images, of 12 extremely luminous "large-core" galaxies that have R_b > 0.5 kpc and M_V < -23.50 +- 0.10 mag, fitting a core-S\'ersic model to the galaxy spheroids. Using 28 "normal-core" (i.e., R_b < 0.5 kpc) galaxies and 1 "large-core" (i.e., R_b > 0.5 kpc) galaxy from the literature, we constructed a final sample of 41 core-S\'ersic galaxies. We find that large-core spheroids (with stellar masses M_* > 10^12 M_sun) are not simple high-mass extensions of the less luminous normal-core spheroids having M_* ~ 8 x 10^10 - 10^12 M_sun. While the two types follow the same strong relations between the spheroid luminosity L_V and R_b (R_b prop L_V^(1.38 +- 0.13), and the spheroid half-light radius R_e (R_e prop L_V^(1.08 +- 0.09), for ellipticals plus BCGs), we discover a break in the core-S\'ersic sigma-L_V relation occurring at M_V ~ -23.50 +- 0.10 mag. Furthermore, we find a strong log-linear R_b-M_BH relation for the 11 galaxies in the sample with directly determined SMBH masses M_BH---3/11 galaxies are large-core galaxies ---such that R_b prop M_BH^(0.83 +- 0.10). However, for the large-core galaxies the SMBH masses estimated from the M_BH-sigma and core-S\'ersic M_BH-L relations are undermassive, by up to a factor of 40, relative to expectations from their large R_b values, confirming earlier results. Our findings suggest that large-core galaxies harbour overmassive SMBHs (M_BH > 10^10 M_sun), considerably (~ 3.7-15.6 sigma and ~ 0.6-1.7 sigma) larger than expectations from the spheroid sigma and L, respectively.