Dust reverberation mapping in the era of big optical surveys and its cosmological application

Abstract

The time lag between optical and near-infrared (IR) flux variability can be taken as a means to determine the sublimation radius of the dusty "torus" around supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN). I will show that data from big optical survey telescopes, e.g. the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), can be used to measure dust sublimation radii as well. The method makes use of the fact that the Wien tail of the hot dust emission reaches into the optical and can be reliably recovered with high-quality photometry. Simulations show that dust sublimation radii for a large sample of AGN can be reliably established out to redshift z ~ 0.1-0.2 with the LSST. Owing to the ubiquitous presence of AGN up to high redshifts, they have been studies as cosmological probes. Here, I discuss how optically-determined dust time lags fit into the suggestion of using the dust sublimation radius as a "standard candle" and propose and extension of the dust time lags as "standard rulers" in combination with IR interferometry.

6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; accepted by ApJL (Feb 18, 2014)

References in corpus (4)

• The innermost region of AGN tori: implications from the HST/NICMOS Type 1 point sources and near-IR reverberation
• The characteristic blue spectra of accretion disks in quasars as uncovered in the infrared
• Variation of Inner Radius of Dust Torus in NGC4151
• VLTI/AMBER differential interferometry of the broad-line region of the quasar 3C273

Cited by in corpus (21)

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• A dust-parallax distance of 19 megaparsecs to the supermassive black hole in NGC 4151
• The dust sublimation radius as an outer envelope to the bulk of the narrow Fe Kalpha line emission in Type 1 AGN
• Reverberation Measurements of the Inner Radii of the Dust Tori in Quasars
• On the Scatter in the Radius - Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei
• Cosmology with AGN dust time lags -- Simulating the new VEILS survey
• Oscillatory patterns in the light curves of 5 long-term monitored type 1 AGN
• Exploring the link between C IV outflow kinematics and sublimation-temperature dust in quasars
• The LSST era of supermassive black holes accretion-disk reverberation mapping
• Determination of the size of the dust torus in H0507+164 through optical and infrared monitoring
• Dust Reverberation of 3C273: torus structure and lag -- luminosity relation
• SALT long-slit spectroscopy of CTS C30.10: two-component Mg II line
• Estimating supermassive black hole masses in AGNs using polarization of broad MgII, H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ lines
• The Paschen Jump as a Diagnostic of the Diffuse Nebular Continuum Emission in Active Galactic Nuclei
• An Extraordinary Response of Iron Emission to the Central Outburst in a Tidal Disruption Event Candidate
• Dust Reverberation Mapping of Type 2 AGN NGC 2110 Realized with X-ray and 3-5 $\mu$m IR monitoring
• The Relative Wavelength Independence of IR Time Lags in NGC4151 During the Years 2010-2015
• The Deviation of the Broad-line Region Size Between Reverberation Mapping and Spectroastrometry
• Detection of eccentric close-binary supermassive black holes with incomplete interferometric data
• Planet Formation Imager (PFI): science vision and key requirements