Determining Central Black Hole Masses in Distant Active Galaxies and Quasars. II. Improved Optical and UV Scaling Relationships

By M. Vestergaard, B. Peterson. 2002

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We present four improved empirical relationships useful for estimating the central black hole mass in nearby AGNs and distant luminous quasars alike using either optical or UV single-epoch spectroscopy. These mass scaling relationships between line widths and luminosity are based on recently improved empirical relationships between the broad-line region size and luminosities in various energy bands and are calibrated to the improved mass measurements of nearby AGNs based on emission-line reverberation mapping. The mass scaling relationship based on the Hβ line luminosity allows mass estimates for low-redshift sources with strong contamination of the optical continuum luminosity by stellar or nonthermal emission, while that based on the C IV λ1549 line dispersion allows mass estimates in cases where only the line dispersion (as opposed to the FWHM) can be reliably determined. We estimate that the absolute uncertainties in masses given by these mass scaling relationships are typically around a factor of 4. We include in an appendix mass estimates for all of the Bright Quasar Survey (PG) quasars for which direct reverberation-based mass measurements are not available.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f07703d0f94df71f0f836186c9d52ceecfecee4d

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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): “We assume 0.4 dex uncertainty on the estimated MBH, based on comparisons of reverberation data and singleepoch data (Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; M08), which dominates the errors on σHβ and L5100.”
Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, background): “4.5 L/LEdd and MBH Arguably the best example of where optical provides additional information content and makes up for selection effects is in our ability to utilise BH mass scaling relations to estimate the masses of the BHs powering quasars (e.g. Vestergaard and Peterson 2006).”
BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATES AND EMISSION-LINE PROPERTIES OF A SAMPLE OF REDSHIFT z > 6.5 QUASARS (2013, methodology): “For example, one can use the Doppler emission-line widths to estimate the mass of the BH (MBH) via empirical mass-scaling relations (e.g., Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009).”
The Star-forming Torus and Stellar Dynamical Black Hole Mass in the Seyfert 1 Nucleus of NGC 3227 (2006, methodology): “The masses of black holes in nearby AGN are most commonly estimated by reverberation mapping (Onken et al. 2004), a technique that can be extended to higher redshift via additional scaling relations (Kaspi et al. 2000, 2005; Vestergaard 2002, 2004).”
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of High-Redshift Active Galactic Nuclei. I. A Metallicity-Accretion Rate Relationship (2004, methodology): “To demonstrate the influence of FWHM (C iv) on NLS1 MBH estimates, we compared the Vestergaard (2002) singleepoch MBH estimated from the UV spectrum with the reverberationMBH from K00, directly measured from the H width, for four NLS1s.”
QUASAR CLUSTERING FROM SDSS DR5: DEPENDENCES ON PHYSICAL PROPERTIES (2008, background): “Unfortunately for most quasars, the only estimates of their BH mass are virial BH masses (e.g., McLure & Jarvis 2002; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; Shen et al. 2008c), which are based on broad line widths and continuum lumi- 10 Luminous quasars are sparse enough such that most of the halos only host…”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Hα and Hβ Reverberation Measurements from First-year Spectroscopy and Photometry (2017, methodology): “We also compare our MBH measurements (MBH,RM) from the Hβ emission line with those measured by Shen et al. (2015a) using single-epoch spectra and the prescription of Vestergaard & Peterson (2006), hereafter VP06, for objects with 5100 Å luminosity measurements (MBH,SE).”
A SURVEY OF z ∼ 6 QUASARS IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DEEP STRIPE. II. DISCOVERY OF SIX QUASARS AT zAB>21 (2009, methodology): “Black hole masses in quasars can be estimated from the widths of broad emission lines; strong UV lines such as C iv λ1549 (hereafter C iv) and Mg ii λ2800 (hereafter Mg ii) are frequently used (e.g. McLure & Dunlop 2004; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; Shen et al. 2008).”
Active Galactic Nucleus Black Hole Masses and Bolometric Luminosities (2002, background): “A less costly alternative is to infer the BLR size from the optical or ultraviolet luminosity (McLure &Dunlop 2001; Vestergaard 2002) with which it is correlated, at least over a limited range of luminosities (Kaspi et al. 2000).”
The Mass Function of Active Black Holes in the Local Universe (2007, background): “During the quasar epoch, 1 z 3, BH mass growth is dominated by optically bright, near-Eddingto growth of massive BHs (e.g., Vestergaard 2002) and this growth basically accounts for most of the total BH mass density observed today (e.g., Yu & Tremaine 2002).”
Black Hole Masses and Eddington Ratios at 0.3 < z < 4 (2005, methodology): “A new calibration of those two emission lines has recently been published (Vestergaard & Peterson 2006), which has derived shallower slopes for both the Hβ and C IV luminosity scalings, with (a, b) values of (0.91, 0.50) and (0.66, 0.53), respectively.”
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): “Since improved mass estimation relations have been published more recently (Vestergaard & Peterson 2006), we redetermine the black hole masses for this sample.”
Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Disappearing Central Engine of the Quasar J1011+5442 (2015, background): “The broad Hβ FWHM of 2350±50 km s−1, combined with the single-epoch mass scaling relationship from (Vestergaard & Peterson 2006), yields MBH = (3.6 ± 0.2) × 10 7 M⊙.”
What controls the C iv line profile in active galactic nuclei (2004, methodology): “We have repeated this analysis with L/LEdd estimated using the C iv based expression for MBH provided by Vestergaard (2002) 2.”
Measuring the Masses of Supermassive Black Holes (2014, background): “This was subsequently extended to the UV emission lines Mg iiλ2798 and C ivλ1549 (McLure & Jarvis 2002; Vestergaard 2002, 2004; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; Kollmeier et al. 2006) to allow applications at higher redshift.”
Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. IX. 10 New Observations of Reverberation Mapping and Shortened Hβ Lags (2018, neutral): “The RHβ–L5100 relation, combined with Equation (1), has been extensively adopted as a BH mass estimator from single-epoch spectroscopy (e.g., McLure & Dunlop 2002; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; Shen et al. 2011; Ho & Kim 2015).”
The transition between BL Lac objects and flat spectrum radio quasars (2010, background): “…Merritt 2000; Gültekin et al. 2009), and iii) the correlation between the luminosity of the continuum at selected fr - quencies and the size of the Broad Line Region (BLR, Vestergaard 2002; Decarli et al. 2010 and references therein), made the estimate of the black hole mass much more affordable.”
ARE THE VARIATIONS IN QUASAR OPTICAL FLUX DRIVEN BY THERMAL FLUCTUATIONS? (2009, methodology): “…to obtain black hole mass estimates for 71 of the AGN, where MBH has been estimated for 20 of them from reverberation mapping (Peterson et al. 2004), and MBH is estimated for the remaining 51 AGN from the broad emission lines using standard scaling relationships (e.g., Vestergaard & Peterson 2006).”
Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei: Past, Present and Future Research (2004, background): “In the most recent characterization of the RBLR − Lλ relation, given by Vestergaard (2002), the BLR size (measured from the Hβ broad lines) correlates with the monochromatic continuum luminosity, measured at 5100 Å, as: RBLR = (30.2 ± 5.6) [ λLλ(5100Å) 1044 ergs−1 ]0.66±0.09 lt days (15) albeit…”