On the Baldwin Effect in Active Galactic Nuclei: II. Intrinsic Spectral Evolution

Abstract

We suggest that the growth of the central black hole in active galactic nuclei (AGN) due to the matter accreted over the AGN lifetime causes an evolution of the luminosity and spectrum. In a previous paper we have shown that the effective temperature of the UV continuum spectrum and the emission-line equivalent width are anti-correlated with the black-hole mass. Here we estimate the change in the equivalent width of the emission lines due to the growth of the black hole mass caused by the accreted material and show that for several plausible accretion scenarios and effective-temperature models the evolving equivalent width is anti-correlated with continuum luminosity, implying that intrinsic evolution could contribute to the Baldwin effect.

14 pages Latex, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (2)

• The Black Hole to Bulge Mass Relation in Active Galactic Nuclei
• On the Baldwin Effect in Active Galactic Nuclei: I. The Continuum-Spectrum - Mass Relationship

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• The CaFe Project: Optical FeII and Near-Infrared Ca II triplet emission in active galaxies. II. The driver(s) of the Ca II and Fe II and its potential use as a chemical clock