The Dynamical Fingerprint of Core Scouring in Massive Elliptical
  Galaxies
  The most massive elliptical galaxies have low-density centers or cores that
differ dramatically from the high-density centers of less massive ellipticals
and bulges of disk galaxies. These cores have been interpreted as the result of
mergers of supermassive black hole binaries, which depopulate galaxy centers by
gravitationally slingshotting central stars toward large radii. Such binaries
naturally form in mergers of luminous galaxies. Here, we analyze the population
of central stellar orbits in 11 massive elliptical galaxies that we observed
with the integral field spectrograph SINFONI at the European Southern
Observatory Very Large Telescope. Our dynamical analysis is orbit-based and
includes the effects of a central black hole, the mass distribution of the
stars, and a dark matter halo. We show that the use of integral field
kinematics and the inclusion of dark matter is important to conclude upon the
distribution of stellar orbits in galaxy centers. Six of our galaxies are core
galaxies. In these six galaxies, but not in the galaxies without cores, we
detect a coherent lack of stars on radial orbits in the core region and a
uniform excess of radial orbits outside of it: when scaled by the core radius,
the radial profiles of the classical anisotropy parameter beta are nearly
identical in core galaxies. Moreover, they match quantitatively the predictions
of black hole binary simulations, providing the first convincing dynamical
evidence for core scouring in the most massive elliptical galaxies.
