Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies - I. Bulge luminosities
  from dedicated near-infrared data
  In an effort to secure, refine and supplement the relation between central
Supermassive Black Hole masses (Mbh), and the bulge luminosities of their host
galaxies, (Lbul), we obtained deep, high spatial resolution K-band images of 35
nearby galaxies with securely measured Mbh, using the wide-field WIRCam imager
at the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope (CFHT). A dedicated data reduction and
sky subtraction strategy was adopted to estimate the brightness and structure
of the sky, a critical step when tracing the light distribution of extended
objects in the near-infrared. From the final image product, bulge and total
magnitudes were extracted via two-dimensional profile fitting. As a first order
approximation, all galaxies were modeled using a simple Sersic-bulge +
exponential-disk decomposition. However, we found that such models did not
adequately describe the structure that we observe in a large fraction of our
sample galaxies which often include cores, bars, nuclei, inner disks, spiral
arms, rings and envelopes. In such cases, we adopted profile modifications
and/or more complex models with additional components. The derived bulge
magnitudes are very sensitive to the details and number of components used in
the models, although total magnitudes remain almost unaffected. Usually, but
not always, the luminosities and sizes of the bulges are overestimated when a
simple bulge+disk decomposition is adopted in lieu of a more complex model.
Furthermore we found that some spheroids are not well fit when the ellipticity
of the Sersic model is held fixed. This paper presents the details of the image
processing and analysis, while in a companion paper we discuss how
model-induced biases and systematics in bulge magnitudes impact the Mbh-Lbul
relation.
