Weighing black holes with warm absorbers

Abstract

We present a new technique for determining an upper limit for the mass of the black hole in active galactic nuclei showing warm absorption features. The method relies on the balance of radiative and gravitational forces acting on outflowing warm absorber clouds. It has been applied to 6 objects: five Seyfert 1 galaxies: IC 4329a, MCG-6-30-15, NGC 3516, NGC 4051 and NGC 5548; and one radio-quiet quasar: MR 2251-178. We discuss our result in comparison with other methods. The procedure could also be applied to any other radiatively driven optically thin outflow in which the spectral band covering the major absorption is directly observed.

13 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables. MNRAS accepted

References in corpus (18)

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• The Optical Polarization and Warm Absorber in IRAS 17020+4544
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Cited by in corpus (18)

• Piecing Together the X-ray Background: Bolometric Corrections for Active Galactic Nuclei
• The nature and origin of Seyfert warm absorbers
• A soft X-ray study of Type I AGN observed with Chandra HETGS
• MCG-6-30-15: Long Timescale X-Ray Variability, Black Hole Mass and AGN High States
• Simultaneous Chandra and RXTE Spectroscopy of the Microquasar H~1743-322: Clues to Disk Wind and Jet Formation from a Variable Ionized Outflow
• Chandra/HETGS Spectroscopy of the Galactic Black Hole GX 339-4: A Relativistic Iron Line and Evidence for a Seyfert-like Warm Absorber
• X-ray Absorption and Reflection in Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Second INTEGRAL AGN Catalogue
• Black Hole Masses in Three Seyfert Galaxies
• Magnetic fields in AGNs and microquasars
• Black hole growth by accretion
• The Properties and the Evolution of the Highly Ionized Gas in MR2251-178
• The response of the Fe Kαline to changes in the X-ray illumination of accretion discs
• High Energy spectra of Seyferts and Unification schemes
• The longest timescale X-ray variability reveals an evidence for active galactic nuclei in the high accretion state
• Radiation pressure-driven outflows from dusty AGN
• The iron $K_{\alpha }$ lines as a tool for magnetic field estimations in non-flat accretion flows
• Inferring the coronal flaring patterns in AGN from reverberation maps