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
Citations
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On the Relation between the Hard X-Ray Photon Index and Accretion Rate for Super-Eddington Accreting Quasars
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Modelling the AGN broad-line region using single-epoch spectra − II. Nearby AGNs
S. I. Raimundo,Marianne Vestergaard,Marianne Vestergaard,M. R. Goad,Catherine J. Grier,Peter R. Williams,Bradley M. Peterson,Bradley M. Peterson,Tommaso Treu +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore a new version of a Bayesian inference, physical model of the broad line region (BLR) which uses an individual spectrum and prior information on the BLR size from the radius-luminosity relation, to model the AGN BLR geometry and dynamics.
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Broad-line Region of the Quasar PG 2130+099 from a Two-year Reverberation Mapping Campaign with High Cadence
Chen Hu,Yan-Rong Li,Pu Du,Zhi-Xiang Zhang,Sha-Sha Li,Ying-Ke Huang,Kai-Xing Lu,Jin-Ming Bai,Luis C. Ho,Wei-Hao Bian,Michael S. Brotherton,Ye-Fei Yuan,Jesús Aceituno,Hartmut Winkler,Jian-Min Wang +14 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted a reverberation-mapping campaign for two years during 2017-2019 to measure the kinematics and structure of the galaxy's ionized gas.
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A Low-Mass Black Hole in the Nearby Seyfert Galaxy UGC 06728
Misty C. Bentz,Merida Batiste,James Seals,Karen Garcia,Rachel Kuzio de Naray,Wesley Peters,Matthew D. Anderson,Jeremy Jones,Kathryn V. Lester,Camilo Machuca,J. Robert Parks,Crystal L. Pope,Mitchell Revalski,Caroline A. Roberts,D. A. Saylor,R. Andrew Sevrinsky,C. S. Turner +16 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the results of a recent reverberation mapping campaign for UGC 06728, a nearby low-luminosity Seyfert 1 in a late-type galaxy.
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