The Low-luminosity End of the Radius-Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei
Misty C. Bentz,Kelly D. Denney,Catherine J. Grier,Aaron J. Barth,Bradley M. Peterson,Marianne Vestergaard,Marianne Vestergaard,Vardha N. Bennert,Gabriela Canalizo,Gisella De Rosa,Alexei V. Filippenko,Elinor L. Gates,Jenny E. Greene,Weidong Li,Matthew A. Malkan,Richard W. Pogge,Daniel Stern,Tommaso Treu,Jong-Hak Woo +18 more
TLDR
In this article, the authors present an updated and revised analysis of the relationship between the H{beta} broadline region (BLR) radius and the luminosity of the active galactic nucleus (AGN).Abstract:
We present an updated and revised analysis of the relationship between the H{beta} broad-line region (BLR) radius and the luminosity of the active galactic nucleus (AGN). Specifically, we have carried out two-dimensional surface brightness decompositions of the host galaxies of nine new AGNs imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3. The surface brightness decompositions allow us to create ''AGN-free'' images of the galaxies, from which we measure the starlight contribution to the optical luminosity measured through the ground-based spectroscopic aperture. We also incorporate 20 new reverberation-mapping measurements of the H{beta} time lag, which is assumed to yield the average H{beta} BLR radius. The final sample includes 41 AGNs covering four orders of magnitude in luminosity. The additions and updates incorporated here primarily affect the low-luminosity end of the R{sub BLR}-L relationship. The best fit to the relationship using a Bayesian analysis finds a slope of {alpha}= 0.533{sup +0.035}{sub -0.033}, consistent with previous work and with simple photoionization arguments. Only two AGNs appear to be outliers from the relationship, but both of them have monitoring light curves that raise doubt regarding the accuracy of their reported time lags. The scatter around the relationship is found to be 0.19more » {+-} 0.02 dex, but would be decreased to 0.13 dex by the removal of these two suspect measurements. A large fraction of the remaining scatter in the relationship is likely due to the inaccurate distances to the AGN host galaxies. Our results help support the possibility that the R{sub BLR}-L relationship could potentially be used to turn the BLRs of AGNs into standardizable candles. This would allow the cosmological expansion of the universe to be probed by a separate population of objects, and over a larger range of redshifts.« lessread more
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Geometric Distances of Quasars Measured by Spectroastrometry and Reverberation Mapping:Monte Carlo Simulations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors carried out detailed analyses of mock data to study impacts of data qualities of spectroastrometry (SA) observations on distance measurements and established a quantitative relationship between statistical uncertainties of distances and relative errors of differential phases.
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Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph–Distant Quasar Survey: Prescriptions for Calibrating UV-based Estimates of Supermassive Black Hole Masses in High-redshift Quasars
Cooper Dix,Brandon Matthews,Ohad Shemmer,Michael S. Brotherton,Adam D. Myers,Ileana Andruchow,W. N. Brandt,G. Ferrero,Richard F. Green,Paulina Lira,Richard M. Plotkin,Gordon T. Richards,Donald P. Schneider +12 more
TL;DR: In this paper , the velocity widths of low-ionization emission lines, typically the Hβ λ4861 line, are used to estimate supermassive black hole mass in quasars.
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Toward measuring supermassive black hole masses with interferometric observations of the dust continuum
G. C. A. Amorim,G. Bourdarot,Wolfgang Brandner,Y. Cao,Y. Cl'enet,R. D. Davies,P. T. de Zeeuw,Jason Dexter,Antonia Drescher,Andreas Eckart,Frank Eisenhauer,M. H. Fabricius,N. M. Förster Schreiber,Paulo J. V. Garcia,Reinhard Genzel,Stefan Gillessen,Damien Gratadour,S. Honig,Makoto Kishimoto,Sylvestre Lacour,Dieter Lutz,Florentin Millour,Hagai Netzer,T. Ott,Thibaut Paumard,Karine Perraut,Guy Perrin,B. M. Peterson,P.-O. Petrucci,Oliver Pfuhl,Miguel A. Prieto,Daniel Rouan,Daryl Joe D. Santos,Jinyi Shangguan,T. Taro Shimizu,Amiel Sternberg,Christian Straubmeier,Eckhard Sturm,L.J. Tacconi,Konrad R. W. Tristram,Felix Widmann,Julien Woillez +41 more
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors focus on the relation between the sizes of the hot dust continuum and the broad-line region (BLR), and demonstrate measuring the BH mass based on the dust continuum size with their first calibration of the R BLR-R d relation.
Journal ArticleDOI
The southern hemisphere narrow-line seyfert 1 infrared survey
Mark Durré,Jeremy Mould +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a near-infrared spectroscopic survey of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies in the southern hemisphere (using the SOFI instrument on the ESO-NTT telescope), sampled from optical surveys, is presented.
Journal ArticleDOI
Breaking the rules at z=0.45: the rebel case of RBS 1055
Andrea Marinucci,G. Vietri,Enrico Piconcelli,Stephen Bianchi,Matteo Guainazzi,Giorgio Lanzuisi,Daniel Stern,Cristian Vignali +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors estimate the mass of a supermassive black hole to be in the range 2.8 × 10 8 -1.2 × 10 9 M (cid:12) , according to the BLR emission lines.
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