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 Seoul National University AGN monitoring project. II. BLR size and black hole mass of two AGNs.
Suvendu Rakshit,Suvendu Rakshit,Jong-Hak Woo,Elena Gallo,Edmund Hodges-Kluck,Edmund Hodges-Kluck,Jaejin Shin,Yiseul Jeon,Hyun-Jin Bae,Vivienne F. Baldassare,Hojin Cho,Wanjin Cho,Adi Foord,Daeun Kang,Wonseok Kang,Marios Karouzos,Minjin Kim,Taewoo Kim,Huynh Anh N. Le,Daeseong Park,Songyoun Park,Donghoon Son,Hyun-Il Sung,Vardha N. Bennert,Matthew A. Malkan +24 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the first reverberation-mapping results of the Seoul National University AGN monitoring program (SAMP), which is designed to focus on luminous AGNs for probing the high end of the size-luminosity relation.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Non-parametric Approach to Constrain the Transfer Function in Reverberation Mapping
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed an extended nonparametric approach to determine the transfer function for RM data, in which the transfer functions are expressed as a sum of a family of relatively displaced Gaussian response functions.
Journal ArticleDOI
A note on periodicity of long-term variations of optical continuum in active galactic nuclei
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the periodic variability characteristics of the sample by testing the relations of the observed variability periods with AGN optical luminosity, black hole mass and accretion rates, and find no significant correlations.
Journal ArticleDOI
The 'Big Dipper' : the nature of the extreme variability of the AGN SDSS J2232−0806.
TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis of the 11 optical spectra obtained to date and assemble a multi-wavelength data set including infrared, ultraviolet, and X-ray observations is presented.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reverberation Mapping of Two Luminous Quasars: The Broad-line Region Structure and Black Hole Mass
Sha-Sha Li,Sen Yang,Zi-Xu Yang,Yi Chen,Yu-Yang Songsheng,Hezhen Liu,Pu Du,Bin Luo,Zhe Yu,Chen Hu,Bo-Wei Jiang,Dong-Wei Bao,Wei-Jian Guo,Zhi-Xiang Zhang,Yan-Rong Li,Ming Xiao,Kai-Xing Lu,Luis C. Ho,Jin-Ming Bai,Wei-Hao Bian,Jesús Aceituno,Takeo Minezaki,Keith Horne,Mitsuru Kokubo,Jian-Min Wang +24 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report the results of a multi-year spectroscopic and photometric monitoring campaign of two luminous quasars, PG 0923+201 and PG 1001+291, both located at the high-luminosity end of the broad-line region (BLR) size-Luminosity relation with optical luminosities above 10(45) erg s(-1).
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