Calibration of AGN Reverberation Distance Measurements

Abstract

In Yoshii et al. (2014), we described a new method for measuring extragalactic distances based on dust reverberation in active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and we validated our new method with Cepheid variable stars. In this paper, we validate our new method with Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) which occurred in two of the AGN host galaxies during our AGN monitoring program: SN 2004bd in NGC 3786 and SN 2008ec in NGC 7469. Their multicolor light curves were observed and analyzed using two widely accepted methods for measuring SN distances, and the distance moduli derived are $\mu =33.47\pm 0.15$ for SN 2004bd and $33.83\pm 0.07$ for SN 2008ec. These results are used to obtain independently the distance measurement calibration factor, $g$. The $g$ value obtained from the SN Ia discussed in this paper is $g_{\mathrm{SN}}=10.61\pm 0.50$ which matches, within the range of 1$\sigma$ uncertainty, $g_{\mathrm{DUST}}=10.60$, previously calculated ab initio in Yoshii et al. (2014). Having validated our new method for measuring extragalactic distances, we use our new method to calibrate reverberation distances derived from variations of H$\beta$ emission in the AGN broad line region (BLR), extending the Hubble diagram to $z\approx 0.3$ where distinguishing between cosmologies is becoming possible.

arXiv commentAstrophysical Journal Letters accepted

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Reverberation Measurements of the Inner Radii of the Dust Tori in Quasars
• Dust Reverberation Mapping in Distant Quasars from Optical and Mid-Infrared Imaging Surveys
• Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age. Secondary distance indicators
• Fundamental Reference AGN Monitoring Experiment (FRAMEx) I: Jumping Out of the Plane with the VLBA
• Spectroscopy and polarimetry of the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1004+4112 with the 6m SAO RAS telescope
• Tully-Fisher Distances and Dynamical Mass Constraints for 24 Host Galaxies of Reverberation-Mapped AGN
• Dust Reverberation Mapping of Type 2 AGN NGC 2110 Realized with X-ray and 3-5 $\mu$m IR monitoring
• Dense Gas and Star Formation in Nearby Infrared Bright Galaxies: APEX survey of HCN and HCO+ J=2-1
• The Relative Wavelength Independence of IR Time Lags in NGC4151 During the Years 2010-2015