Modeling the Reverberation Response of the Broad-line Region in Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

The variable continuum emission of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) produces corresponding responses in the broad emission lines, which are modulated by light travel delays, and contain information on the physical properties, structure, and kinematics of the emitting gas region. The reverberation mapping technique, a time series analysis of the driving light curve and response, can recover some of this information, including the size and velocity field of the broad-line region (BLR). Here we introduce a new forward-modeling tool, the Broad Emission Line MApping Code, which simulates the velocity-resolved reverberation response of the BLR to any given input light curve by setting up a 3D ensemble of gas clouds for various specified geometries, velocity fields, and cloud properties. In this work, we present numerical approximations to the transfer function by simulating the velocity-resolved responses to a single continuum pulse for sets of models representing a spherical BLR with a radiatively driven outflow and a disklike BLR with Keplerian rotation. We explore how the structure, velocity field, and other BLR properties affect the transfer function. We calculate the response-weighted time delay (reverberation “lag”), which is considered to be a proxy for the luminosity-weighted radius of the BLR. We investigate the effects of anisotropic cloud emission and matter-bounded (completely ionized) clouds and find the response-weighted delay is only equivalent to the luminosity-weighted radius when clouds emit isotropically and are radiation-bounded (partially ionized). Otherwise, the luminosity-weighted radius can be overestimated by up to a factor of 2.