Events at Physics |
galaxies, spanning a range of cosmic environments. The resulting census of black holes in the local universe will assess whether the linear relation between MBH and stellar spheroid mass arises naturally from hierarchical merging, and it may shed light upon the origins of recently-discovered overmassive black holes. (2) The most massive elliptical galaxies exhibit an extremely bottom-heavy stellar initial mass function (IMF), at odds with
galaxy formation models where they are assembled from mergers of lower-mass systems. One possible means of reconciliation would be the detection of radial gradients in the IMF. I will present new measurements of IMF-sensitive spectral features with unprecedented radial coverage, suggesting that massive ellipticals' extreme are indeed confined to small radii.