A Detailed View of the Broad Line Region in NGC 3783 from Velocity-Resolved Reverberation Mapping

Abstract

We have modeled the full velocity-resolved reverberation response of the H$\beta$ and He II optical broad emission lines in NGC 3783 to constrain the geometry and kinematics of the low-ionization and high-ionization broad line region. The geometry is found to be a thick disk that is nearly face on, inclined at $\sim 18^{\circ }$ to our line of sight, and exhibiting clear ionization stratification, with an extended H$\beta$-emitting region ($r_{\mathrm{median}}=10.07_{-1.12}^{+1.10}$ light days) and a more compact and centrally-located He II-emitting region ($r_{\mathrm{median}}=1.33_{-0.42}^{+0.34}$ light days). In the H$\beta$-emitting region, the kinematics are dominated by near-circular Keplerian orbits, but with $\sim 40$% of the orbits inflowing. The more compact He II-emitting region, on the other hand, appears to be dominated by outflowing orbits. The black hole mass is constrained to be $M_{\mathrm{BH}}=2.82_{-0.63}^{+1.55}\times 10^7$ $M_{\odot }$, which is consistent with the simple reverberation constraint on the mass based on a mean time delay, line width, and scale factor of $⟨f⟩=4.82$. The difference in kinematics between the H$\beta$- and He II-emitting regions of the BLR is intriguing given the recent history of large changes in the ionizing luminosity of NGC 3783 and evidence for possible changes in the BLR structure as a result.

14 pages, 12 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (13)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. VI. The Shadow and Mass of the Central Black Hole
• Evolutionary Stellar Population Synthesis with MILES. Part I: The Base Models and a New Line Index System
• Reverberation mapping of Active Galactic Nuclei: from X-ray corona to dusty torus
• Modeling reverberation mapping data I: improved geometric and dynamical models and comparison with cross-correlation results
• Cosmicflows-3: Two Distance$-$Velocity Calculators
• The central parsec of NGC 3783: a rotating broad emission line region, asymmetric hot dust structure, and compact coronal line region
• First Results from the Lick AGN Monitoring Project: The Mass of the Black Hole in Arp 151
• Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. IX. Velocity-Delay Maps for Broad Emission Lines in NGC 5548
• Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. XII. Broad-Line Region Modeling of NGC 5548
• Robotic Reverberation Mapping of the Southern Seyfert NGC 3783
• Tully-Fisher Distances and Dynamical Mass Constraints for 24 Host Galaxies of Reverberation-Mapped AGN
• A Comparison of Two Methods for Estimating Black Hole Spin in Active Galactic Nuclei
• TLDR: Time Lag/Delay Reconstructor

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Broad Line Region and Black Hole Mass of NGC 4151
• Reverberation Mapping of IC4329A