Central Masses and Broad-Line Region Sizes of Active Galactic Nuclei. II. A Homogeneous Analysis of a Large Reverberation-Mapping Database

By B. Peterson, L. Ferrarese, K. Gilbert, S. Kaspi, M. Malkan, D. Maoz, D. Merritt, H. Netzer, C. Onken, R. Pogge and 2 more. 2004

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We present improved black hole masses for 35 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) based on a complete and consistent reanalysis of broad emission-line reverberation-mapping data. From objects with multiple line measurements, we find that the highest precision measure of the virial product cτΔV2/G, where τ is the emission-line lag relative to continuum variations and ΔV is the emission-line width, is obtained by using the cross-correlation function centroid (as opposed to the cross-correlation function peak) for the time delay and the line dispersion (as opposed to FWHM) for the line width and by measuring the line width in the variable part of the spectrum. Accurate line-width measurement depends critically on avoiding contaminating features, in particular the narrow components of the emission lines. We find that the precision (or random component of the error) of reverberation-based black hole mass measurements is typically around 30%, comparable to the precision attained in measurement of black hole masses in quiescent galaxies by gas or stellar dynamical methods. Based on results presented in a companion paper by Onken et al., we provide a zero-point calibration for the reverberation-based black hole mass scale by using the relationship between black hole mass and host-galaxy bulge velocity dispersion. The scatter around this relationship implies that the typical systematic uncertainties in reverberation-based black hole masses are smaller than a factor of 3. We present a preliminary version of a mass-luminosity relationship that is much better defined than any previous attempt. Scatter about the mass-luminosity relationship for these AGNs appears to be real and could be correlated with either Eddington ratio or object inclination.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c07fa7e269a3cbb48247d2ce22164b6a01da06d6

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Citations in the corpus

COMPARING SINGLE-EPOCH VIRIAL BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATORS FOR LUMINOUS QUASARS (2012, methodology): “The CIV line is known to vary and time-lags have been measured for CIV in several objects (e.g., Peterson et al. 2004; Kaspi et al. 2007), although the sample is too small to derive a reliableR − L relation for CIV.”
THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY REVERBERATION MAPPING PROJECT: TECHNICAL OVERVIEW (2014, methodology): “The observed relationship between time delay and velocity width for multiple emission lines in the same source is apparently consistent with this hypothesis28 (Peterson & Wandel 1999, 2000; Kollatschny 2003; Peterson et al. 2004; Bentz et al. 2010a).”
ARE THE VARIATIONS IN QUASAR OPTICAL FLUX DRIVEN BY THERMAL FLUCTUATIONS? (2009, methodology): “Black hole masses and 5100Å luminosities were taken from Peterson 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): “Vestergaard & Peterson (2006) considered the AGNs in the Peterson et al. (2004) database.”
The black hole mass–stellar velocity dispersion correlation: bulges versus pseudo-bulges (2008, result): “…2.0+1.4−1.3 × 107 M is a mean value of the measurement using stellar kinematics ([0.7-2.0]×107 M , Davies et al. 2006) and gas kinematics (2.3+1.1−0.5 × 107 M [corrected for distance], Hicks & Malkan 2008), which is consistent with the RM measurement ([4.2 ± 2.1] × 107 M , Peterson et al. 2004).”
ON THE COSMIC EVOLUTION OF THE SCALING RELATIONS BETWEEN BLACK HOLES AND THEIR HOST GALAXIES: BROAD-LINE ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE zCOSMOS SURVEY (2009, methodology): “We measure black hole masses by applying the “virial” or “empirically calibrated photo- ionization” method (Wandel et al. 1999; Kaspi et al. 2000; Peterson et al. 2004; Bentz et al. 2006) to the Mg IIλ2798Å broad emission line.”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Hα and Hβ Reverberation Measurements from First-year Spectroscopy and Photometry (2017, methodology): “…I07 Band: i, Telescope: CFHT, Field: f1i Band: i, Telescope: SDSS Hβ 6625 6650 6675 6700 6725 6750 MJD - 50000 Hα −100−50 0 50 100 τ (days) Most prior RM measurements have been based upon cross-correlation methods and simple linear interpolation between observations (e.g., Peterson et al. 2004).”
BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATES AND EMISSION-LINE PROPERTIES OF A SAMPLE OF REDSHIFT z > 6.5 QUASARS (2013, methodology): “While the gas velocity can be obtained from the width of the BELs, the only way to directly estimate RBLR in non-nearby AGN is through reverberation mapping (RM; e.g., Peterson et al. 2004).”
Black Hole Masses and Eddington Ratios at 0.3 < z < 4 (2005, methodology): “We determine the peak flux in the line region and measure the FWHM of the line as follows (adapted from Peterson et al. 2004, and illustrated in Fig.”
REVERBERATION MAPPING MEASUREMENTS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES IN SIX LOCAL SEYFERT GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “…and uncertainties, i.e., smaller overall lags, however, the reanalyzed values still had large uncertainties, resulting in a measurement consistent with zero lag: τcent = 8.2 +5.1 −8.4 days and τcent = 5.4 +14.1 −8.7 days for the CTIO and LAG data sets, respectively (Peterson et al. 2004).”
Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. II. Scaling Relations at z = 0.36 (2007, methodology): “To construct a suitable local comparison sample, we use Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) images to derive new measurements of the spheroid luminosity of a sample of local Seyfert galaxies withMBH available from reverberation mapping (Peterson et al. 2004; Bentz et al. 2006b).”
Physical Properties of 15 Quasars at z ≳ 6.5 (2017, methodology): “In the literature, the decrease of L[CII] in high-redshift quasars has been tentatively explained invoking a role of the central AGN emission, which is heating the dust.”
Properties of flat-spectrum radio-loud Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies (2014, methodology): “We used the line dispersion, because it is less affected by inclination, Eddington ratio, and line profile (Peterson et al. 2004, Collin et al. 2006).”
STELLAR VELOCITY DISPERSION MEASUREMENTS IN HIGH-LUMINOSITY QUASAR HOSTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE AGN BLACK HOLE MASS SCALE (2013, methodology): “The virial products for most of these objects were calculated from time lags that were determined with traditional cross correlation methods (e.g., Peterson et al. 2004; Bentz et al. 2009c).”
Six months of multiwavelength follow-up of the tidal disruption candidate asassn-14li and implied tde rates from asas-sn (2015, background): “This is the opposite of what is seen in reverberation mapping studies of quasars, where estimates of the black hole mass MBH ∝ ∆v2L1/2 remain roughly constant because the luminosity decreases as the line width broadens (e.g., Peterson et al. 2004; Denney et al. 2009).”
QUANTIFYING QUASAR VARIABILITY AS PART OF A GENERAL APPROACH TO CLASSIFYING CONTINUOUSLY VARYING SOURCES (2009, background): “The Kelly et al. (2009) sample is a heterogeneous mixture of MACHO variability-selected quasars (Geha et al. 2003) and quasars monitored at least in part for reverberation mapping (Giveon et al. 1999; Peterson et al. 2004).”
REVERBERATION MAPPING RESULTS FOR FIVE SEYFERT 1 GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “For comparison with previous results, we also include in Table 8 the lag measurements made using the interpolation method originally described by Gaskell & Sparke (1986) and Gaskell & Peterson (1987) which was later modified by White & Peterson (1994) and Peterson et al. (1998, 2004).”