The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: The H$\beta$ Radius-Luminosity Relation

Abstract

Results from a few decades of reverberation mapping (RM) studies have revealed a correlation between the radius of the broad-line emitting region (BLR) and the continuum luminosity of active galactic nuclei. This "radius-luminosity" relation enables survey-scale black-hole mass estimates across cosmic time, using relatively inexpensive single-epoch spectroscopy, rather than intensive RM time monitoring. However, recent results from newer reverberation mapping campaigns challenge this widely used paradigm, reporting quasar BLR sizes that differ significantly from the previously established radius-luminosity relation. Using simulations of the radius--luminosity relation with the observational parameters of SDSS-RM, we find that this difference is not likely due to observational biases. Instead, it appears that previous RM samples were biased to a subset of quasar properties, and the broader parameter space occupied by the SDSS-RM quasar sample has a genuinely wider range of BLR sizes. We examine the correlation between the deviations from the radius-luminosity relation and several quasar parameters; the most significant correlations indicate that the deviations depend on UV/optical SED and the relative amount of ionizing radiation. Our results indicate that single-epoch black-hole mass estimates that do not account for the diversity of quasars in the radius-luminosity relation could be overestimated by an average of ~0.3 dex.

arXiv comment11 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to ApJ. Current version includes revisions after referee report

References in corpus (41)

• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• Detailed Structural Decomposition of Galaxy Images
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Reverberation Measurements for 17 Quasars and the Size-Mass-Luminosity Relations in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Central Masses and Broad-Line Region Sizes of Active Galactic Nuclei. II. A Homogeneous Analysis of a Large Reverberation-Mapping Database
• A Catalog of Quasar Properties from SDSS DR7
• Spectral Energy Distributions and Multiwavelength Selection of Type 1 Quasars
• The Multi-Object, Fiber-Fed Spectrographs for SDSS and the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• The Low-Luminosity End of the Radius-Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Relationship Between Luminosity and Broad-Line Region Size in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Systematic Effects in Measurement of Black Hole Masses by Emission-Line Reverberation of Active Galactic Nuclei: Eddington Ratio and Inclination
• The Lick AGN Monitoring Project: Broad-Line Region Radii and Black Hole Masses from Reverberation Mapping of Hbeta
• The diversity of quasars unified by accretion and orientation
• The AGN Black Hole Mass Database
• An Alternative Approach To Measuring Reverberation Lags in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Modeling reverberation mapping data II: dynamical modeling of the Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2008 dataset
• Spectral Classification of Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Eigenspectra; Redshift and Luminosity Effects
• The black hole mass - stellar velocity dispersion relation of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ Reverberation Measurements From First-year Spectroscopy and Photometry
• Stellar Velocity Dispersion Measurements in High-Luminosity Quasar Hosts and Implications for the AGN Black Hole Mass Scale
• Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. IX 10 New Observations of Reverberation Mapping and Shortened H$\beta$ Lags
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Technical Overview
• The SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: The Quasar Luminosity Function from Data Release Nine
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Sample Characterization
• The Radius-Luminosity Relationship Depends on Optical Spectra in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. V. A New Size-Luminosity Scaling Relation for the Broad-Line Region
• Supermassive black holes with high accretion rates in active galactic nuclei: II. the most luminous standard candles in the Universe
• Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. V. Optical Spectroscopic Campaign and Emission-Line Analysis for NGC 5548
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: No Evidence for Evolution in the M-sigma Relation to z~1
• SDSS-V: Pioneering Panoptic Spectroscopy
• Self-shadowing Effects of Slim Accretion Disks in Active Galactic Nuclei: Diverse Appearance of the Broad-line Region
• The Black Hole Mass of NGC 4151: Comparison of Reverberation Mapping and Stellar Dynamical Measurements
• Accretion Disc Time Lag Distributions: Applying CREAM to Simulated AGN Light Curves
• Interpreting broad emission-line variations I : Factors influencing the emission-line response
• On Reverberation Mapping Lag Uncertainties
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Accretion and Broad Emission Line Physics from a Hypervariable Quasar
• Calibration of the virial factor $f$ in supermassive black hole masses of reverberation-mapped AGNs
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Comparison of Lag Measurement Methods with Simulated Observations
• Three dimensional dust mapping of 12 supernovae remnants in the Galactic anticentre
• Interpretation of Departure from the Broad Line Region Scaling in Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Quasar Host Galaxies at $z<0.8$ from Image Decomposition

Cited by in corpus (33)

• Reverberation mapping of Active Galactic Nuclei: from X-ray corona to dusty torus
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Estimating Masses of Black Holes in Quasars with Single-Epoch Spectroscopy
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: MgII Lag Results from Four Years of Monitoring
• The spatially resolved broad line region of IRAS 09149-6206
• Evolutionary Paths of Active Galactic Nuclei and Their Host Galaxies
• Testing AGN outflow and accretion models with CIV and HeII emission line demographics in z=2 quasars
• Time Delay of MgII Emission Response for the Luminous Quasar HE 0435-4312: Towards Application of High-Accretor Radius-Luminosity Relation in Cosmology
• The picture of BLR in 2.5-D FRADO: Dynamics & Geometry
• Reverberation Mapping Measurements of Black Hole Masses and Broad-Line Region Kinematics in Mrk 817 and NGC 7469
• OzDES Reverberation Mapping Program: The first Mg II lags from five years of monitoring
• Standardizing reverberation-measured C IV time-lag quasars, and using them with standardized Mg II quasars to constrain cosmological parameters
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: The M_BH-Host Relations at 0.2<z<0.6 from Reverberation Mapping and Hubble Space Telescope Imaging
• Do reverberation-measured H$\beta$ quasars provide a useful test of cosmology?
• Scatter Analysis Along the Multidimensional Radius-Luminosity Relations for Reverberation-Mapped Mg II Sources
• A Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Survey of Low-Redshift Swift-BAT Active Galaxies
• Demographics of z ~ 6 Quasars in the Black Hole Mass-Luminosity Plane
• Investigating Changing-Look Active Galactic Nuclei with Long-term Optical and X-Ray Observations
• Modeling Quasar UV/Optical Variability with the Corona-heated Accretion-disk Reprocessing (CHAR) Model
• Testing Super-Eddington Accretion onto a Supermassive Black Hole: Reverberation Mapping of PG 1119+120
• Systematically smaller single-epoch quasar black hole masses using a radius-luminosity relationship corrected for spectral bias
• Estimating Masses of Supermassive Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei from the Halpha Emission Line
• TiDES: The 4MOST Time Domain Extragalactic Survey
• Wavelength-resolved reverberation mapping of intermediate redshift quasars HE 0413-4031 and HE 0435-4312: Dissecting Mg II, optical Fe II, and UV Fe II emission regions
• Black hole virial masses from single-epoch photometry: the miniJPAS test case
• Geometric Distances of Quasars Measured by Spectroastrometry and Reverberation Mapping:Monte Carlo Simulations
• Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph - Distant Quasar Survey: Prescriptions for Calibrating UV-Based Estimates of Supermassive Black Hole Masses in High-Redshift Quasars
• Spectropolarimetric measurements of hidden broad lines in nearby megamaser galaxies: a lack of clear evidence for a correlation between black hole masses and virial products
• Revealing the structure of the lensed quasar Q 0957+561: III. SMBH mass via gravitational redshift
• Standardizing reverberation-measured Mg II time-lag quasars, by using the radius-luminosity relation, and constraining cosmological model parameters
• Size and kinematics of the CIV broad emission line region from microlensing-induced line profile distortions in two gravitationally lensed quasars
• OzDES Reverberation Mapping Program: Stacking analysis with H$\beta$, Mg II and C IV
• A broad-line quasar with unexplained extreme velocity offsets: post-shock outflow?
• Reverberation Mapping of Two Luminous Quasars: the Broad-line Region Structure and Black Hole Mass