Supermassive Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Calibration of the Black Hole Mass-Velocity Dispersion Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei

By C. Onken, L. Ferrarese, D. Merritt, B. Peterson, R. Pogge, M. Vestergaard, A. Wandel. 2004

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We calibrate reverberation-based black hole (BH) masses in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by using the correlation between BH mass, MBH, and bulge/spheroid stellar velocity dispersion, σ*. We use new measurements of σ* for six AGNs and published velocity dispersions for 10 others, in conjunction with improved reverberation-mapping results, to determine the scaling factor required to bring reverberation-based BH masses into agreement with the quiescent galaxy MBH-σ* relationship. The scatter in the AGN BH masses is found to be less than a factor of 3. The current observational uncertainties preclude the use of the scaling factor to discriminate between broad-line region models.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/385d0d024934d62d82f3c3f9f2a6df5187514425

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Citations in the corpus

Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. IX. 10 New Observations of Reverberation Mapping and Shortened Hβ Lags (2018, methodology): “…the same way, by comparing the RM objects with measurements of bulge stellar velocity dispersion (σ*) with the M•–σ* relation of inactive galaxies (e.g., Onken et al. 2004; Woo et al. 2010; Park et al. 2012; Grier et al. 2013; Ho & Kim 2014; Woo et al. 2015, see a brief review in Du et al. 2017).”
Systematic effects in measurement of black hole masses by emission-line reverberation of active galactic nuclei: Eddington ratio and inclination (2006, methodology): “In Table 2, we give the average scale factors, computed as by Onken et al. (2004).”
MASS FUNCTIONS OF THE ACTIVE BLACK HOLES IN DISTANT QUASARS FROM THE LARGE BRIGHT QUASAR SURVEY, THE BRIGHT QUASAR SURVEY, AND THE COLOR-SELECTED SAMPLE OF THE SDSS FALL EQUATORIAL STRIPE (2009, methodology): “…hole mass determinations of low redshift active nuclei based on the reverberation mapping method (e.g., Blandford & McKee 1982; Peterson 1993) which have re- cently been updated following a homogeneous reanalysis of the available reverberation database (Peterson et al. 2004; Onken et al. 2004).”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT 2011: SPECTROSCOPIC CAMPAIGN AND EMISSION-LINE LIGHT CURVES (2015, methodology): “…reverberationbased black hole masses to the localMBH −σ relation of inactive galaxies (Onken et al. 2004; Woo et al. 2010) will compensate for this offset, and consequently the the virialf -factor derived from this procedure (e.g., Onken et al. 2004; Woo et al. 2010) will be biased high by∼ 10%.”
Physical Properties of 15 Quasars at z ≳ 6.5 (2017, methodology): “…& Osmer (2009): MBH M = 106.86 ( FWHM 103 km s−1 )2( λLλ,3000 1044 erg s−1 )0.5 (11) This relation has been obtained using thousands of high quality quasar spectra from SDSS-DR3 (Schneider et al. 2005), and has been calibrated on robust reverberation mapping mass estimates (Onken et al. 2004).”
THE RADIATIVE EFFICIENCY OF ACCRETION FLOWS IN INDIVIDUAL ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2010, background): “The reverberation mapped M estimates themselves show a scatter of 2.6-2.9 relative the M − σ relation (Onken et al. 2004).”
How Mergers May Affect the Mass Scaling Relation between Gravitationally Bound Systems (2007, background): “…of the BH mass calibration, the possibility that the normalization of the virial BH mass estimate (Kaspi et al. 2000; Vestergaard 2002; Onken et al. 2004; Kaspi et al. 2005; Greene & Ho 2005; Peterson & Bentz 2006; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006) may evolve with time, because of the fact…”
THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN: X-RAYS DRIVE THE UV THROUGH NIR VARIABILITY IN THE 2013 ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS OUTBURST IN NGC 2617 (2013, background): “…gas estimated from the width of the emission line,RBLR is the distance of the broad line emitting gas from the central black hole, G is the gravitational constant, and f is a dimensionless scale factor that depends on inclination, geometry and kinematics of the BLR (e.g., Onken et al. 2004).”
Probing the Coevolution of Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxies Using Gravitationally Lensed Quasar Hosts (2006, methodology): “These have been explored in detail locally (Gebhardt et al. 2000b; Ferrarese et al. 2001; Nelson et al. 2004, Onken et al. 2004; Barth, Greene, & Ho 2005a; Greene & Ho 2005, Kaspi et al. 2005) and should work also at higher redshift.”
THE FUNDAMENTAL PLANE OF ACCRETION ONTO BLACK HOLES WITH DYNAMICAL MASSES (2009, background): “It does not include reverberation mapping measurements, which are direct measurements of mass but are secondary in that they are normalized to the other measurements via theM–σ relation (e.g.,Peterson et al. 2004; Onken et al. 2004).”
The Effect of Radiation Pressure on Virial Black Hole Mass Estimates and the Case of Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies (2008, methodology): “8 where (logMBH)0,i is now the BH mass from reverberation mapping computed according to Onken et al. 2004 (f = 5.5, logg = −10.0) or to our new calibration (f = 3.1, logg = 7.6).”
Selection Bias in Observing the Cosmological Evolution of the M•-σ and M•-L Relationships (2007, background): “It may also be significant that the typicalM 4 ; 107 M in the Onken et al. (2004) sample is roughly an order of magnitude less massive than the typicalM 3 ; 108 M in theWoo et al. (2006) sample.”
A CATALOG OF QUASAR PROPERTIES FROM SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 7 (2010, methodology): “For instance, the calibrations forHβ and MgII in McLure & Dunlop (2004) used the old RM masses and virial coefficient, while those in Vestergaard & Peterson (2006) and Vestergaard & Osmer (2009) used the updated RM masses and virial coefficient (Onken et al. 2004).”
Using the Fundamental Plane of black hole activity to distinguish X-ray processes from weakly accreting black holes (2011, background): “They also only consider AGN with dynamical black hole mass estimates from Gültekin et al. (2009b), which are more reliable than secondary scalings like reverberation mapping (see e.g. Onken et al. 2004; Peterson et al. 2004).”
PRECISE BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM MEGAMASER DISKS: BLACK HOLE–BULGE RELATIONS AT LOW MASS (2010, methodology): “For the moment, an averagef is derived as the BH mass zeropoint that brings ensembles of low-redshift, low-mass AGNs into agreement with theMBH − σ∗ (e..g, Nelson et al. 2004; Onken et al. 2004; Greene & Ho 2006b; Shen et al. 2008; Woo et al. 2010) or theMBH − Lbulge (Bentz et al. 2009b) relations.”
Black Hole Masses and Eddington Ratios at 0.3 < z < 4 (2005, methodology): “The results of Onken et al. (2004), in which reverberation-based BH masses were calibrated by assuming that AGNs follow the same correlation between BH mass and stellar velocity dispersion as quiescent galaxies, suggest that the zero points of these relations should be adjusted upward by factors of…”
RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, methodology): “Here we adopt ǫ = 1.075, corresponding to the mean virial factor < f >= 4.3 from Grier et al. (2013), where ǫ = f/4 (e.g., Onken et al. 2004).”
A Reverberation-based Mass for the Central Black Hole in NGC 4151 (2006, background): “We caution, however, that the calibration of the reverberation-based black hole mass scale (Onken et al. 2004) is averaged over many objects.”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: REVERBERATION MAPPING OF OPTICAL HYDROGEN AND HELIUM RECOMBINATION LINES (2010, methodology): “This particular value of the scaling factor is based on the union of the LAMP sample and the sample previously considered by Onken et al. (2004), and is consistent with the scaling factor determined by Onken et al. (2004) (〈 f 〉 = 5.5± 1.8), which has been widely used in the literature and was used…”
Simultaneous X-ray/optical/UV snapshots of active galactic nuclei from XMM–Newton: spectral energy distributions for the reverberation mapped sample (2008, methodology): “…and kinematics of the BLR. Values for f between ∼ 3 and ∼ 6 have been proposed previously, by requiring that the reverberation mass estimates obey the MBH − σ relation (where σ is the velocity dispersions of stars in the galaxy bulge), as done by Onken et al. (2004) and Marconi et al. (2008).”