Comparing and Calibrating Black Hole Mass Estimators for Distant Active Galactic Nuclei

By K. Mcgill, J. Woo, T. Treu, M. Malkan. 2007

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Black hole mass (MBH) is a fundamental property of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). In the distant universe, MBH is commonly estimated using the Mg II, Hβ, or Hα emission line widths and the optical/UV continuum or line luminosities as proxies for the characteristic velocity and size of the broad-line region. Although they all have a common calibration in the local universe, a number of different recipes are currently used in the literature. It is important to verify the relative accuracy and consistency of the recipes, as systematic changes could mimic evolutionary trends when comparing various samples. At z = 0.36, all three lines can be observed at optical wavelengths, providing a unique opportunity to compare different empirical recipes. We use spectra from the Keck Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to compare MBH estimators for a sample of 19 AGNs at this redshift. We compare popular recipes available from the literature, finding that MBH estimates can differ up to 0.38 ± 0.05 dex in the mean (or 0.13 ± 0.05 dex, if the same virial coefficient is adopted). Finally, we provide a set of 30 internally self-consistent recipes for determining MBH from a variety of observables. The intrinsic scatter between cross-calibrated recipes is in the range 0.1-0.3 dex. This should be considered as a lower limit to the uncertainty of the MBH estimators.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee3a78338cfa2bd1021fcffe19e835432dfb1bf5

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Citations in the corpus

Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. III. The MBH-σ* Relation in the Last Six Billion Years (2008, methodology): “First, since our samples were selected based on the flux and width of the broad lines, they could be biased towards high MBH objects (paper II; see also Lauer et al. 2007b).”
EVIDENCE FOR NON-EVOLVING Fe ii/Mg ii RATIOS IN RAPIDLY ACCRETING z ∼ 6 QSOs (2011, background): “…velocity can be obtained from the width of the broad emission lines: vBLR = f ·FWHM , where f is a geometrical factor that accounts for the de-projection of vBLR from the line of sight (see McGill et al. 2008; Decarli et al. 2008), and FWHM is the full width at half maximum of the line profile.”
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): “Each of these relations carries a significant scatter of about 0.3 dex (McGill et al. 2008).”
ESTIMATING BLACK HOLE MASSES IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI USING THE Mg ii λ2800 EMISSION LINE (2009, background): “These basic questions are critical for understanding the systematic uncertainties in studies of the cosmological evolution of BHs (cf. Shen et al. 2008; McGill et al. 2008; Denney et al. 2009a).”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: THE MBH–σ* RELATION FOR REVERBERATION-MAPPED ACTIVE GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “…used to calibrate all single-epoch mass estimates (e.g., Woo & Urry 2002; Vestergaard et al. 2002; McLure & Jarvis 2002; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; McGill et al. 2008; Shen et al. 2008), this comparison is effectively a crucial link in establishing black hole masses for all AGNs across the…”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: BROAD-LINE REGION RADII AND BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM REVERBERATION MAPPING OF Hβ (2009, background): “…hole masses in AGNs (e.g., Laor 1998; Wandel et al. 1999; McLure & Jarvis 2002; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006), and as such, current studies of black holes in AGNs rest upon the calibration provided by the reverberation mapping sample (e.g., Onken et al. 2004; Collin et al. 2006; McGill et al. 2008).”
Black Hole Growth to z = 2 - I: Improved Virial Methods for Measuring M_BH and L/L_Edd (2012, methodology): “• 19 SDSS sources atz ≃ 0.36 from the study of (McGill et al. 2008, Mc08 in the present paper) for which the MgII and Hβ lines were observed in a dedicated Keck/LRIS campaign (Woo et al. 2006).”
A CATALOG OF QUASAR PROPERTIES FROM SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 7 (2010, unknown): “Vestergaard 2002; McLure & Jarvis 2002; McLure & Dunlop 2004; Greene & Ho 2005b; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; McGill et al. 2008; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009; Wang et al. 2009b).”
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, background): “Those mass estimates 4 The McGill et al. (2008) relations do not satisfy these requirements; they are based on a sample of only 19 SDSS quasars at z ≈0.36 and do not include a relation for C iv.”
A Systematic Analysis of Fe II Emission in Quasars: Evidence for Inflow to the Central Black Hole (2008, methodology): “The error in Lbol/LEdd is roughly 0.3 dex, which is dominated by the systematical error in estimating the BH mass using empirical relations (McGill et al. 2008).”
COMPARING SINGLE-EPOCH VIRIAL BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATORS FOR LUMINOUS QUASARS (2012, background): “Comparison with Earlier Studies There have been many studies comparing different virial mass estimators (e.g., Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; McGill et al. 2008; Dietrich & Hamann 2004; Dietrich et al. 2009; Netzer et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2008, 2011; Wang et al. 2009).”
Modelling reverberation mapping data – II. Dynamical modelling of the Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2008 data set (2013, background): “…guest on 08 D ecem ber 2018 estimates applied to much larger samples of AGNs through the BLRsize-to-luminosity relation (Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; McGill et al. 2008; Vestergaard 2011), it is important to measure MBH in reverberation-mapped AGNs with as few assumptions and added uncertainties…”
An expanded Mbh–σ diagram, and a new calibration of active galactic nuclei masses (2010, methodology): “Furthermore, the single-epoch methods of SMBH mass estimation which were calibrated to the RM results would be simi- larly affected (Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; McGill et al. 2008; Wang et al. 2009; Greene, Peng & Ludwig 2010).”
Measuring the Masses of Supermassive Black Holes (2014, background): “[10]McGill et al. (2008). ing radiation pressure simply leads to systematic underestimation of AGN black hole masses.”