Optical spectroscopic observations of intermediate-mass black holes and their host galaxies: the $M_{BH}-\sigma_*$ relation

Abstract

Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs; $M_{BH} <2*10^{5} M_{\odot}$) in galaxy centers are cruciel for painting a coherent picture of the formation and growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Using Big Data analysis, we identified 305 IMBH candidates for IMBH and 1623 candidates of `light-weight' SMBHs ($2 * 10^{5} M_{odot} < M_{BH} <10^{6} M_{\odot}$). For 35 host galaxies from this combined sample with the X-ray-confirmed active galactic nuclei (AGN) we collected and analyzed optical spectroscopic observations. These data show that bulge stellar velocity dispersions ($\sigma_*$) lie in the range of 24$\dots$118~km/s and do not follow the correlation with $M_{BH}$ established by larger SMBHs indicating that in the $10^{5}-10^{6} M_{\odot}$ range the accretion is the prevailing BH growth channel.