THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: BROAD-LINE REGION RADII AND BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM REVERBERATION MAPPING OF Hβ

By M. Bentz, Jonelle L. Walsh, A. Barth, N. Baliber, N. Bennert, G. Canalizo, A. Filippenko, M. Ganeshalingam, E. Gates, Jenny E. Greene and 40 more. Astrophysical Journal, 2009

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We have recently completed a 64-night spectroscopic monitoring campaign at the Lick Observatory 3-m Shane telescope with the aim of measuring the masses of the black holes in 12 nearby (z < 0.05) Seyfert 1 galaxies with expected masses in the range ∼106–107 M☉ and also the well-studied nearby active galactic nucleus (AGN) NGC 5548. Nine of the objects in the sample (including NGC 5548) showed optical variability of sufficient strength during the monitoring campaign to allow for a time lag to be measured between the continuum fluctuations and the response to these fluctuations in the broad Hβ emission. We present here the light curves for all the objects in this sample and the subsequent Hβ time lags for the nine objects where these measurements were possible. The Hβ lag time is directly related to the size of the broad-line region (BLR) in AGNs, and by combining the Hβ lag time with the measured width of the Hβ emission line in the variable part of the spectrum, we determine the virial mass of the central supermassive black hole in these nine AGNs. The absolute calibration of the black hole masses is based on the normalization derived by Onken et al., which brings the masses determined by reverberation mapping into agreement with the local MBH–σ⋆relationship for quiescent galaxies. We also examine the time lag response as a function of velocity across the Hβ line profile for six of the AGNs. The analysis of four leads to rather ambiguous results with relatively flat time lags as a function of velocity. However, SBS 1116+583A exhibits a symmetric time lag response around the line center reminiscent of simple models for circularly orbiting BLR clouds, and Arp 151 shows an asymmetric profile that is most easily explained by a simple gravitational infall model. Further investigation will be necessary to fully understand the constraints placed on the physical models of the BLR by the velocity-resolved response in these objects.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4959be3b352c506946b8d4f9a536f99b4a4b40d5

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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): “…of the new light curves, especially the continuum, is relatively better. used in most RM studies (e.g., Peterson et al. 1998; Kaspi et al. 2000; Bentz et al. 2009; Grier et al. 2012; Fausnaugh et al. 2017, Papers I, IV, and V), simply integrates the flux in the Hβ band after subtracting the…”
REVERBERATION MAPPING MEASUREMENTS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES IN SIX LOCAL SEYFERT GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “The top panel of Figure 6 shows the Bentz et al. (2009b) RBLR–”
A ∼50,000 M⊙ SOLAR MASS BLACK HOLE IN THE NUCLEUS OF RGG 118 (2015, methodology): “We use the Hα emission line to estimate ∆V (Greene & Ho 2005), and LHα as a proxy for RBLR (Kaspi et al. 2000; Peterson et al. 2004; Greene & Ho 2005; Bentz et al. 2009, 2013).”
DWARF GALAXIES WITH OPTICAL SIGNATURES OF ACTIVE MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2013, methodology): “The BLR size has been measured only for ∼ 50 active galaxies using reverberation mapping (e.g., Peterson et al. 2004; Bentz et al. 2009b; Denney et al. 2010; Barth et al. 2011; Bentz et al. 2013), in which the time lag between continuum and BLR variability establishes a size scale for the BLR.”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Hα and Hβ Reverberation Measurements from First-year Spectroscopy and Photometry (2017, methodology): “Thus far, about 60 AGN have MBH measurements obtained through reverberation mapping (e.g., Peterson et al. 2004; Kaspi et al. 2000, 2005; Bentz et al. 2009, 2010; Denney et al. 2010; Barth et al. 2015; Grier et al. 2012; Du et al. 2014, 2016b,a; Hu et al. 2015).”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: REVERBERATION MAPPING OF OPTICAL HYDROGEN AND HELIUM RECOMBINATION LINES (2010, background): “…(hereafter Paper I), followed by a full presentation of the photometric light curves (Walsh et al. 2009; hereafter Paper II) and the Hβ light curves and analysis (Bentz et al. 2009; hereafter Paper III), and a re-examination of theMBH −σ⋆ relationship for AGNs (Woo et al. 2010; hereafter Paper IV).”
REVERBERATION MAPPING RESULTS FOR FIVE SEYFERT 1 GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “We compute the average 5100 Å luminosities of our sources, correcting for host galaxy contamination following Bentz et al. (2009a).”
THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY REVERBERATION MAPPING PROJECT: TECHNICAL OVERVIEW (2014, methodology): “We assign the BLR size using the size-luminosity relation for Hβ in Bentz et al. (2009a) with a nominal scatter of 40%.”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: THE MBH–σ* RELATION FOR REVERBERATION-MAPPED ACTIVE GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “Thus we in- ferred the AGN luminosity from the measured time lag using the size-luminosity relation (Bentz et al. 2009a).”
RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, methodology): “While these parameters have been seen to vary from object to object (Kollatschny 2003; Bentz et al. 2009; Denney et al. 2010; Barth et al. 2011), a single scaling factor is generally adopted from calibrating the ensemble of reverberation-based BH masses to the MBH − σ⋆ relation (e.g., Gebhardt et…”
BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATES AND EMISSION-LINE PROPERTIES OF A SAMPLE OF REDSHIFT z > 6.5 QUASARS (2013, background): “RM studies of Hβ emission in local AGNs have lead to the discovery of a tight correlation between the AGN continuum luminosity and the distance of the emitting gas (RBLR − L relation; Kaspi et al. 2005; Bentz et al. 2009, 2013; Zu et al. 2011).”
Discovery of a relation between black hole mass and soft X-ray time lags in active galactic nuclei (2011, background): “In all the other cases (5 out of 15), we considered estimates obtained from the empirical relation between the optical luminosity at 5100 Å and the broad line region size (RBLR, e.g. Bentz et al. 2009).”
An expanded Mbh–σ diagram, and a new calibration of active galactic nuclei masses (2010, background): “We have excluded PG 1211+143 and IC 4329A because the associated uncertainty on their virial products gives values consistent with zero (Peterson et al. 2004).”
BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. I. Spectral Measurements, Derived Quantities, and AGN Demographics (2017, methodology): “Black hole mass measurements using reverberation mapping (e.g., Bentz et al. 2009), or OH megamesars (e.g., Staveley-Smith et al. 1992) offer more precise measurements of black hole masses; however, these techniques can only be applied to a small (N < 50) AGN sample that lacks the uniform selection…”
X-ray reverberation around accreting black holes (2014, methodology): “Optical reverberation studies of AGN use time-domain techniques to measure time-lags, specifically the cross-correlation function (e.g. Peterson 1993; Peterson et al. 2004; Bentz et al. 2009; Denney et al. 2010).”
Modelling reverberation mapping data – II. Dynamical modelling of the Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2008 data set (2013, methodology): “Comparing our measurement of the black hole mass to the virial products calculated from cross-correlation time lags from Bentz et al. (2009) and line widths from Park et al. (2012b), we measure the f factors for Mrk 1310 to be log10(fσ ) = 1.63+0.26−0.27 and log10(fFWHM) = 0.79+0.26−0.27 (see…”
The AGN Black Hole Mass Database (2014, methodology): “AGNs that were strongly variable in the past may not be strongly variable while they are being monitored (cf. the monitoring results for Mrk 290 as described by Bentz et al. 2009 and Denney et al. 2009).”
The origin of the broad line region in active galactic nuclei (2010, methodology): “Here we use the result of Bentz et al. (2009), where the starlight contamination was carefully removed.”
THE LOW-LUMINOSITY END OF THE RADIUS–LUMINOSITY RELATIONSHIP FOR ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2013, methodology): “While the slope of the relationship did not change much (α = 0.52±0.06; Bentz et al. 2009a), the scatter in the relationship was reduced from ∼40% to ∼35%.”