Radio Luminosity, Black Hole Mass and Eddington Ratio for Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

We investigate the M BH −σ * relation for radio-loud quasars with redshift z < 0.83 in Data Release 3 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The sample consists of 3772 quasars with better model of Hβ and [O III] lines and available radio luminosity, including 306 radio-loud quasars, 3466 radio-quiet quasars with measured radio luminosity or upper-limit of radio luminosity (181 radio-quiet quasars with measured radio luminosity). The virial supermassive black hole mass (M BH ) is calculated from the broad Hβ line, the host stellar velocity dispersion (σ * ) is traced by the core [O III] gaseous velocity dispersion, and the radio luminosity and the radio loudness are derived from the FIRST catalog. Our results are follows: (1) For radio-quiet quasars, we confirm that there is no obvious deviation from the M BH − σ * relation defined in inactive galaxies when M BH uncertainties and luminosity bias are concerned. (2) We find that radio-loud quasars deviate much from the M BH − σ * relation respect to that for radio-quiet quasars. This deviation is only partly due to the possible cosmology evolution of the M BH − σ * relation and the luminosity bias. (3) The radio luminosity is proportional to M 1.28+0.31 −0.24 for radio-quiet quasars and M 3.10+1.40 −1.10 for radio-loud quasars. The weaker correlation of the radio luminosity dependence upon the mass and the Eddington ratio for radio-loud quasars shows that other physical effects would account for their radio luminosities, such as the black hole spin.

Synchrotron peak luminosity, black hole mass and Eddington ratio for SDSS flat-spectrum radio quasars

“…We expect that the uncertainties of M bh and λ will not significantly alter our results. Our results are consistent with others in the way that the jet formation is tightly related with the black hole mass, as well as with the Eddington ratio [9,11,12]. However, the dependence is quite different, which might be due to the sample selection and parameters used to indicate the jet physics.…”

“…Either using the radio luminosity, or jet power/bulk kinetic power, different research groups reached the same notion that the jet formation is not only tightly related with the black hole mass, but also with the Eddington ratio [9,11,12]. In this work, we investigate the relationship between the synchrotron peak luminosity and both the black hole mass and the Eddington ratio for a sample of 185 FSRQs selected from the SDSS DR3 quasar catalog [13].…”

Emission lines properties of the radio-loud quasar LAMOST J1131+3114

“…The black hole mass M BH is estimated, after Sulentic et al (2006), as 5.4 × 10 8 M and the Eddington luminosity is 7 × 10 46 erg s −1 , yielding a very high Eddington ratio L bol /L Edd of 0.3 ± 0.1 (with a L 5100 A assumed uncertainty of 20%). We note that alternate derivations (Kaspi et al 2000(Kaspi et al , 2005Wu et al 2004;Bian et al 2008) of M BH based on the total (BC + VBC) Hβ luminosity of 8.9 × 10 42 erg s −1 (assuming no internal reddening in the BLR and no flux losses in the spectrographs) lead to 1.4 × 10 8 M ≤ M BH ≤ 2.6 × 10 8 M and an even higher Eddington ratio in the range 0.6 to 1.2. Instead, these figures place our quasar as a member of Population B defined by Sulentic et al (2007) and also characterized by Zamfir et al (2010), this being supported by the radio loudness and weak Fe II emission.…”

“…Such a large difference between two subcomponents of the BLR is known in many objects and has been investigated in numerous samples by e.g. Hu et al (2008) and Zamfir et al (2010). The latter authors explore the properties of the Hβ emission line profile in a homogeneous sample of N ∼ 470 low redshift quasars using composite/median spectra and they measure line profile parameters describing the shape of the broad Hβ line profile (asymmetry index A.I., centroid shift c(x), and kurtosis index K.I., as defined by Marziani et al 1996) on the individual objects.…”

“…Their results give further support to the concept of two populations A and B (with line FWHM, respectively, narrower and broader than 4000 km s −1 ; Sulentic et al 2007). Hu et al (2008) report on a systematic investigation of the Hβ and Fe II emission lines in a sample of 568 quasars within z < 0.8 selected from the SDSS and suggest the existence of an intermediate FWHM region.…”