Estimating Masses of Supermassive Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei from the Halpha Emission Line

Abstract

The goal of this project is to construct an estimator for the masses of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) based on the broad Halpha emission line. We make use of published reverberation mapping data. We remeasure all Halpha time lags from the original data as we find that often the reverberation measurements are improved by detrending the light curves. We produce mass estimators that require only the Halpha luminosity and the width of the Halpha emission line as characterized by either the FWHM or the line dispersion. It is possible, on the basis of a single spectrum covering the Halpha emission line, to estimate the mass of the central supermassive black hole in AGNs, taking into account all three parameters believed to affect mass measurement: luminosity, line width, and Eddington ratio. The typical formal accuracy in such estimates is of order 0.2-0.3 dex.

16 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

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• Robust AGN and host-galaxy decomposition in optical spectral fitting
• The Cliff: A Metal-Poor Little Red Dot Hosting an Overmassive Black Hole at $z=3.55$
• Reverberation Mapping Data of NGC 5548 Imply a Multicomponent Broad-Line Region
• Gravitational Wave Measurement of the $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$-$M_{\mathrm{bulge}}$ Intrinsic Scatter at High Redshift
• Low-Eddington ratio, changing-look active galactic nuclei: the case of NGC 4614