Reverberation Mapping of High-Luminosity Quasars

Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences

Brandt, William N.¹  Netzer, Hagai²  Maoz, Dan³  Kaspi, Shai⁴  Schneider, Donald P.⁴  Shemmer, Ohad⁴ 

[1] Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, United States;Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, United States;Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, Pennsylvania State University, United States;Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

关键词: quasars;    black holes;    Reverberation mapping;    Broad line region;    AGN;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fspas.2017.00031

学科分类：空间科学

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Over the past three decades reverberation mapping (RM) has been applied to about 100 AGNs. Their broad line region (BLR) sizes were measured and yielded mass estimates of the black holes in their center. However, very few attempts were carried out for high-luminosity quasars, at luminosities higher than 10$^{46}$ erg/sec in the optical. Most of these attempts failed since RM of such quasars is difficult due to a number of reasons, mostly due to the long time needed to monitor these objects. During the past two decades we carried out a RM campaign on six high-luminosity quasars. This contribution presents some of the final light curves of that RM campaign in which we measured the BLR size in C\,{\sc iv} of three of the objects (S5\,0836+71, SBS\,1116+603, and SBS\,1425+606). We present the C\,{\sc iv} BLR size and luminosity relation over eight orders of magnitude in luminosity, pushing the luminosity limit to its highest point so far.

【 授权许可】

CC BY