A Revised Broad-Line Region Radius and Black Hole Mass for the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 NGC 4051

Abstract

We present the first results from a high sampling rate, multi-month reverberation mapping campaign undertaken primarily at MDM Observatory with supporting observations from telescopes around the world. The primary goal of this campaign was to obtain either new or improved Hbeta reverberation lag measurements for several relatively low luminosity AGNs. We feature results for NGC 4051 here because, until now, this object has been a significant outlier from AGN scaling relationships, e.g., it was previously a ~2-3sigma outlier on the relationship between the broad-line region (BLR) radius and the optical continuum luminosity - the R_BLR-L relationship. Our new measurements of the lag time between variations in the continuum and Hbeta emission line made from spectroscopic monitoring of NGC 4051 lead to a measured BLR radius of R_BLR = 1.87 (+0.54 -0.50) light days and black hole mass of M_BH = 1.73 (+0.55 -0.52) x 10^6 M_sun. This radius is consistent with that expected from the R_BLR-L relationship, based on the present luminosity of NGC 4051 and the most current calibration of the relation by Bentz et al. (2009a). We also present a preliminary look at velocity-resolved Hbeta light curves and time delay measurements, although we are unable to reconstruct an unambiguous velocity-resolved reverberation signal.

38 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ, changes from v1 reflect suggestions from anonymous referee

References in corpus (11)

• A Semi-Analytic Model for the Co-evolution of Galaxies, Black Holes, and Active Galactic Nuclei
• Biases in Virial Black Hole Masses: An SDSS Perspective
• The Radius-Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei: The Effect of Host-Galaxy Starlight on Luminosity Measurements
• The effect of radiation pressure on virial black hole mass estimates and the case of Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies
• Evidence for Merger Remnants in Early-Type Host Galaxies of Low-Redshift QSOs
• The Black Hole Mass-Bulge Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei from Reverberation Mapping and Hubble Space Telescope Imaging
• Setting UBVRI Photometric Zero-Points Using Sloan Digital Sky Survey ugriz Magnitudes
• The Mass of the Black Hole in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4593 from Reverberation Mapping
• Mass Functions of the Active Black Holes in Distant Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3
• The Black Hole-Bulge Relationship in Luminous Broad-Line Active Galactic Nuclei and Host Galaxies
• First Results from the Lick AGN Monitoring Project: The Mass of the Black Hole in Arp 151

Cited by in corpus (32)

• Unification of the Fundamental Plane and Super-Massive Black Holes Masses
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Estimating Masses of Black Holes in Quasars with Single-Epoch Spectroscopy
• Reverberation Mapping of the Broad-line Region in NGC 5548: Evidence for Radiation Pressure?
• Timing the warm absorber in NGC 4051
• Mass, Spin, and Ultralight Boson Constraints from the Intermediate Mass Black Hole in the Tidal Disruption Event 3XMM J215022.4-055108
• Supermassive black holes with high accretion rates in active galactic nuclei: X. Optical variability characteristics
• A Low-Mass Black Hole in the Nearby Seyfert Galaxy UGC 06728
• A Radio Polarimetric Study to Disentangle AGN Activity and Star-Formation in Seyfert Galaxies
• Following Black Hole Scaling Relations Through Gas-Rich Mergers
• The LSST era of supermassive black holes accretion-disk reverberation mapping
• Methods of Reverberation Mapping. I. Time-lag Determination by Measures of Randomness
• Active Galactic Nuclei with Ultra-fast Outflows Monitoring Project: The Broad-line Region of Mrk 79 as a Disk Wind
• Radiative Driving of the AGN Outflows in the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4051
• Relativistic Fe K$\alpha$ Line Revealed in the Composite X-ray Spectrum of Narrow Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies --- do their black holes have averagely low or intermediate spins?
• X-ray Reverberation Mapping of Ark 564 using Gaussian Process Regression
• Time Series Analysis of Active Galactic Nuclei: The case of Arp 102B, 3C 390.3, NGC 5548 and NGC 4051
• The Rapidly Spinning Intermediate-Mass Black Hole 3XMM J150052.0+015452
• Black hole mass estimation using X-ray variability measurements in Seyfert galaxies
• Nature of the Warm Absorber Outflow in NGC 4051
• More than softer-when-brighter: the X-Ray powerlaw spectral variability in NGC 4051
• The SDSS-V Black Hole Mapper Reverberation Mapping Project: Unusual Broad-Line Variability in a Luminous Quasar
• A new timescale-mass scaling for the optical variation of active galactic nuclei across the intermediate-mass to supermassive scales
• Measuring the AGN sublimation radius with a new approach: reverberation mapping of the broad line polarization
• Direct observation of the Broad Line Region in X-rays during the low state of NGC4051
• Constraints on the radio loud/radio quiet dichotomy from the fundamental plane
• Variable Hard X-ray Emission from the Candidate Accreting Black Hole in Dwarf Galaxy Henize 2-10
• Investigation of a small X-ray flaring event in NLS1 galaxy NGC 4051
• Impact of the cosmic neutrino background on black hole superradiance
• Spectral variability studies in Active Galactic Nuclei: Exploring continuum and emission line regions in the age of LSST and JWST
• Co-interacting dark matter and conformally coupled light scalars
• A broadband X-ray study of a sample of AGNs with [OIII] measured inclinations
• Emission-Line and Continuum Reverberation Mapping of the NLS1 Galaxy WPVS 48