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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The central parsec of NGC 3783: a rotating broad emission line region, asymmetric hot dust structure, and compact coronal line region
António Amorim,M. Bauböck,Wolfgang Brandner,M. L. Bolzer,Y. Clénet,Ric Davies,P. T. de Zeeuw,Jason Dexter,A. Drescher,Andreas Eckart,Frank Eisenhauer,N. M. Förster Schreiber,Feng Gao,Paulo J. V. Garcia,Reinhard Genzel,Stefan Gillessen,D. Gratadour,Sebastian F. Hönig,D. Kaltenbrunner,Makoto Kishimoto,Sylvestre Lacour,Dieter Lutz,Florentin Millour,Hagai Netzer,Thomas Ott,T. Paumard,Karine Perraut,Guy Perrin,Bradley M. Peterson,Pierre-Olivier Petrucci,Oliver Pfuhl,Mercedes Prieto,Daniel Rouan,J. Sanchez-Bermudez,Jinyi Shangguan,Taro Shimizu,Marc Schartmann,J. Stadler,Amiel Sternberg,Odele Straub,Christian Straubmeier,E. Sturm,Linda J. Tacconi,Konrad R. W. Tristram,P. Vermot,S. von Fellenberg,I. Waisberg,Felix Widmann,Julien Woillez +48 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the sub-pc gas and dust structure around the nearby type 1 AGN hosted by NGC 3783 using VLTI/GRAVITY and SINFONI data, and find the broad line region (BLR) probed through broad Br$\gamma$ emission is well described by a rotating, thick disk with a radial distribution of clouds peaking in the inner region.
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OI and CaII observations in intermediate redshift quasars
Mary Loli Martínez-Aldama,Deborah Dultzin,Paola Marziani,Jack W. Sulentic,Alessandro Bressan,Yang Chen,G. M. Stirpe +6 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors presented an unprecedented spectroscopic survey of the CaII triplet + OI for a sample of 14 luminous quasars, including all 14 sources, and retrieved accurate line widths and fluxes of the triplet and OI.
Journal ArticleDOI
Photoionized emission and absorption features in the high-resolution X-ray spectra of NGC 3783
Junjie Mao,M. Mehdipour,Jelle Kaastra,Elisa Costantini,Ciro Pinto,Graziella Branduardi-Raymont,Ehud Behar,U. Peretz,Simone Bianchi,Gerard A. Kriss,Gabriele Ponti,B. De Marco,P.-O. Petrucci,L. Di Gesu,R. Middei,Jacobo Ebrero,Nahum Arav +16 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the photoionized emission features in the December 2016 Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) spectra, and compare them to the time-averaged RGS spectrum obtained in 2000-2001 when the soft X-ray continuum was heavily obscured.
Journal ArticleDOI
On reverberation mapping lag uncertainties
Zhefu Yu,Christopher S. Kochanek,Bradley M. Peterson,Bradley M. Peterson,Ying Zu,W. N. Brandt,Edward M. Cackett,Michael Fausnaugh,I. M. McHardy +8 more
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of systematic errors on reverberation mapping lag uncertainty estimates from the JAVELIN method and the interpolated cross-correlation function (ICCF) method were explored.
Journal ArticleDOI
Quasar Rain: the Broad Emission Line Region as Condensations in the Warm Accretion Disk Wind
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose that condensations form in the warm, radiation pressure driven, accretion disk wind of quasars creating the broad emission line region (BELR) clouds and uniting them with the other two manifestations of cool, 10,000 K, gas in quasar, the low ionization phase of the warm absorbers (WAs) and the clouds causing X-ray eclipses.
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