Gravitational Redshift of Emission Lines in the AGN Spectra

Abstract

The detection of gravitationally redshifted optical emission lines has been reported just for a few active galaxies. In this paper we give a short overview of studies that analyzed or exploited the detection of the gravitational redshift in optical AGN spectra. In addition, we tested the consistency of gravitational redshift as the physical origin of the redward shifts observed in their spectra using a sample of $\approx$ 50 Hamburg-ESO intermediate to high redshift quasars that are among the most luminous quasars known ($10^{47}\lesssim L\lesssim 10^{48}$ erg/s), and are expected to host very massive black holes. To this aim we modeled the line profile with accretion disk models around a black hole.

10 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables

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Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Black Hole Mass Estimation in Type 1 AGN: H$\beta$ vs. Mg II lines and the role of Balmer continuum
• Linear Spectropolarimetric Analysis of Fairall 9 with VLT/FORS2
• Statistical analysis of AlIII 1860 and CIII] 1909 emission lines as virial black hole mass estimators in quasars
• Periodic optical variability of AGN
• Exploring possible relations between optical variability time scales and broad emission line shapes in AGN
• Active galactic nuclei and gravitational redshifts