Stability of the Broad-line Region Geometry and Dynamics in Arp 151 Over Seven Years

Pancoast, Anna; Barth, Aaron J.; Horne, K.; Treu, Tommaso; Brewer, Brendon J.; Bennert, Vardha N.; Canalizo, Gabriela; Gates, E. L.; Li, W.; Malkan, M. A.; Sand, David J.; Schmidt, Thomas; Valenti, S.; Woo, J. H.; Clubb, K. I.; Cooper, Michael C.; Crawford, S.; Hönig, S. F.; Joner, M. D.; Kandrashoff, M. T.; Lazarova, Mariana; Nierenberg, Anna; Romero-Colmenero, E.; Son, Donghoon; Tollerud, Erik; Walsh, Jonelle L.; Winkler, Hartmut

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aab3c6

Cited by 34 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…It is consistent with the results by the BLRs dynamical model to fit simultaneously the AGNs continuum/Hβ light curves and Hβ line profiles (e.g. Li et al 2018;Pancoast et al 2018;Williams et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 91%

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An extended size–luminosity relation for the reverberation-mapped AGNs: the role of the accretion rate

Zhao

Bian

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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For a compiled sample of 120 reverberation-mapped AGNs, the bivariate correlations of the broad-line regions (BLRs) size (R BLR ) with the continuum luminosity at 5100Å (L 5100 ) and the dimensionless accretion rates (Ṁ ) are investigated. Using our recently calibrated virial factor f , and the velocity tracer from the Hβ Full-width at half-maximum (FWHM(Hβ )) or the line dispersion (σ Hβ ) measured in the mean spectra, three kinds of SMBH masses andṀ are calculated. An extended R BLR (Hβ) − L 5100 relation includingṀ is found to be stronger than the canonical R BLR (Hβ) − L 5100 relation, showing smaller scatters. The observational parameters, R Fe (the ratio of optical Fe II to Hβ line flux) and the line profile parameter D Hβ (D Hβ = FWHM(Hβ)/σ Hβ ), have relations with three kinds ofṀ . Using R Fe and D Hβ to substituteṀ , extended empirical R BLR (Hβ) − L 5100 relations are presented. R Fe is a better "fix" for the R BLR (Hβ) − L 5100 offset than the Hβ shape D Hβ . The extended empirical R BLR (Hβ) − L 5100 relation including R Fe can be used to calculate R BLR , and thus the single-epoch SMBH mass M BH . Our measured accretion rate dependence is not consistent with the simple model of the accretion disk instability leading the BLRs formation. The BLR may instead form from the inner edge of the torus, or from some other means in which BLR size is positively correlated with accretion rate and the SMBH mass.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…MBH from the BLR dynamical method, where the virial factor fBLR is directly constrained from velocity-resolved reverberation mapping. (e.g Li et al 2018;Pancoast et al 2018;Williams et al 2018…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An extended size–luminosity relation for the reverberation-mapped AGNs: the role of the accretion rate

Zhao

Bian

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…In this work we model the structure of the BLR of a sample of low redshift AGN using the model presented by R19. This model is a modified version of the BLR model of Pancoast et al (2018), first presented by Pancoast et al (2011). Our model uses single-epoch spectra (as opposed to monitoring data) to constrain the geometry and dynamics parameters of the BLR.…”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous versions of the model, the generated continuum light curve was constrained based on the observed continuum light curve as determined from monitoring campaigns (e.g. Pancoast et al 2014b, Grier et al 2017, Pancoast et al 2018, Williams et al 2018. In our version of the model, where we use only a single spectrum instead of monitoring data, we do not have an observed light curve to analyse (R19).…”

Section: A Single-epoch Broad Line Region Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling the AGN broad-line region using single-epoch spectra − II. Nearby AGNs

Raimundo

Vestergaard

Goad

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The structure of the broad line region (BLR) is an essential ingredient in the determination of active galactic nuclei (AGN) virial black hole masses, which in turn are important to study the role of black holes in galaxy evolution. Constraints on the BLR geometry and dynamics can be obtained from velocity-resolved studies using reverberation mapping data (i.e. monitoring data). However, monitoring data are observationally expensive and only available for a limited sample of AGN, mostly confined to the local Universe. Here we explore a new version of a Bayesian inference, physical model of the BLR which uses an individual spectrum and prior information on the BLR size from the radius-luminosity relation, to model the AGN BLR geometry and dynamics. We apply our model to a sample of 11 AGN, which have been previously modelled using monitoring data. Our single-epoch BLR model is able to constrain some of the BLR parameters with inferred parameter values that agree within the uncertainties with those determined from the modelling of monitoring data. We find that our model is able to derive stronger constraints on the BLR for AGN with broad emission lines that qualitatively have more substructure and more asymmetry, presumably as they contain more information to constrain the physical model. The performance of this model makes it a practical and cost-effective tool to determine some of the BLR properties of a large sample of low and high redshift AGN, for which monitoring data are not available.

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“…The transfer function describes the emission line response to the continuum variability and is related to the physical structure and kinematics of the BLR (Blandford & McKee 1982). The choice of the transfer function width is motivated by velocity-resolved lag observations (e.g., Grier et al 2013;Skielboe et al 2015;Pancoast et al 2018), but we have tested different transfer function widths and found that the results are insensitive to this detail (e.g., Shen et al 2015a).…”

Section: Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Comparison of Lag Measurement Methods with Simulated Observations

Shen

Brandt

et al. 2019

ApJ

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We investigate the performance of different methodologies that measure the time lag between broad-line and continuum variations in reverberation mapping data using simulated light curves that probe a range of cadence, time baseline, and signal-to-noise ratio in the flux measurements. We compare three widely-adopted lag measuring methods: the Interpolated Cross-Correlation Function (ICCF), the z-transformed Discrete Correlation Function (ZDCF) and the MCMC code JAVELIN, for mock data with qualities typical of multi-object spectroscopic reverberation mapping (MOS-RM) surveys that simultaneously monitor hundreds of quasars. We quantify the overall lag detection efficiency, the rate of false detections, and the quality of lag measurements for each of these methods and under different survey designs (e.g., observing cadence and depth) using mock quasar light curves. Overall JAVELIN and ICCF outperform ZDCF in essentially all tests performed. Compared with ICCF, JAVELIN produces higher quality lag measurements, is capable of measuring more lags with timescales shorter than the observing cadence, is less susceptible to seasonal gaps and S/N degradation in the light curves, and produces more accurate lag uncertainties. We measure the Hβ broad-line region size-luminosity (R-L) relation with each method using the simulated light curves to assess the impact of selection effects of the design of MOS-RM surveys. The slope of the R-L relation measured by JAVELIN is the least biased among the three methods, and is consistent across different survey designs. These results demonstrate a clear preference for JAVELIN over the other two non-parametric methods for MOS-RM programs, particularly in the regime of limited light curve quality as expected from most MOS-RM programs.

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Stability of the Broad-line Region Geometry and Dynamics in Arp 151 Over Seven Years

Cited by 34 publications

References 76 publications

An extended size–luminosity relation for the reverberation-mapped AGNs: the role of the accretion rate

An extended size–luminosity relation for the reverberation-mapped AGNs: the role of the accretion rate

Modelling the AGN broad-line region using single-epoch spectra − II. Nearby AGNs

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Comparison of Lag Measurement Methods with Simulated Observations

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