THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT 2011: Fe II REVERBERATION FROM THE OUTER BROAD-LINE REGION

Barth, Aaron J.; Pancoast, Anna; Bennert, Vardha N.; Brewer, Brendon J.; Canalizo, Gabriela; Filippenko, A. V.; Gates, E. L.; Greene, Jenny E.; Li, Weidong; Malkan, Matthew A.; Sand, David J.; Stern, Daniel; Treu, Tommaso; Woo, J. H.; Assef, Roberto J.; Bae, Hyun‐Jin; Buehler, Tabitha; Cenko, S. B.; Clubb, K. I.; Cooper, Michael C.; Diamond‐Stanic, Aleksandar M.; Hönig, S. F.; Joner, M. D.; Laney, C. D.; Lazarova, Mariana; Nierenberg, Anna; Silverman, J. M.; Tollerud, Erik; Walsh, Jonelle L.

doi:10.1088/0004-637x/769/2/128

Cited by 159 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…However, several groups (e.g., Barth et al 2011b;Park et al 2012;Barth et al 2013;Hu et al 2015) have developed methods to isolate various components of the AGN spectrum, allowing for the disentanglement of various broad emission line features from the rest of the AGN, such as the host galaxy starlight, Fe ii features and various other species that often blend with the emission lines we are investigating. The recent success with isolating these different components of the AGN spectrum allows one to measure light curves for various AGN components despite strong starlight and blending (Barth et al 2011b;Barth et al 2013). As a result, the spectral decomposition methods have been continually improved and implemented in RM spectra (Park et al 2012;Barth et al 2015).…”

Section: Spectral Decompositonmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Structure of the Broad-line Region in Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Dynamical Modeling of Data From the AGN10 Reverberation Mapping Campaign

Grier

Pancoast

Barth

et al. 2017

ApJ

143

171

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We present inferences on the geometry and kinematics of the broad-Hβ line-emitting region in four active galactic nuclei monitored as a part of the fall 2010 reverberation mapping campaign at MDM Observatory led by the Ohio State University. From modeling the continuum variability and response in emission-line profile changes as a function of time, we infer the geometry of the Hβ-emitting broad line regions to be thick disks that are close to face-on to the observer with kinematics that are well-described by either elliptical orbits or inflowing gas. We measure the black hole mass to be log 10 (M BH ) = 7.25 −0.23 for PG 2130+099. These black hole mass measurements are not based on a particular assumed value of the virial scale factor f , allowing us to compute individual f factors for each target. Our results nearly double the number of targets that have been modeled in this manner, and investigate the properties of a more diverse sample by including previously modeled objects. We measure an average scale factor f in the entire sample to be log 10f = 0.54 ± 0.17 when the line dispersion is used to characterize the line width, which is consistent with values derived using the normalization of the M BH -σ relation. We find that the scale factor f for individual targets is likely correlated with the black hole mass, inclination angle, and opening angle of the broad line region but we do not find any correlation with the luminosity.

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Section: Spectral Decompositonmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Structure of the Broad-line Region in Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Dynamical Modeling of Data From the AGN10 Reverberation Mapping Campaign

Grier

Pancoast

Barth

et al. 2017

ApJ

143

171

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“…Since the Fe II fit is poorly constrained and sometimes varied drastically from night to night, the continuum model flux also varied significantly as a result, which in turn introduced noise to the broad Hβ fit component. To address this issue, we constrained the Fe II flux to lie within 10% of the value from the fit to the mean spectrum (Barth et al 2013). We also fixed the Fe II redshift to that of the mean spectrum and constrained the Fe II broadening kernel to be within 5% of its value from the mean spectrum fit.…”

Section: Spectral Decompositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. V. Optical Spectroscopic Campaign and Emission-line Analysis for NGC 5548

Pei¹,

Fausnaugh²,

Barth³

et al. 2017

ApJ

113

116

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We present the results of an optical spectroscopic monitoring program targeting NGC 5548 as part of a larger multiwavelength reverberation mapping campaign. The campaign spanned 6 months and achieved an almost daily cadence with observations from five ground-based telescopes. The Hβ and He II λ4686 broad emission-line light curves lag that of the 5100Å optical continuum by , respectively. The Hβ lag relative to the 1158Å ultraviolet continuum light curve measured by the Hubble Space Telescope is ∼50% longer than that measured against the optical continuum, and the lag difference is consistent with the observed lag between the optical and ultraviolet continua. This suggests that the characteristic radius of the broad-line region is ∼50% larger than the value inferred from optical data alone. We also measured velocity-resolved emission-line lags for Hβ and found a complex velocity-lag structure with shorter lags in the line wings, indicative of a broadline region dominated by Keplerian motion. The responses of both the Hβ and He II emission lines to the driving continuum changed significantly halfway through the campaign, a phenomenon also observed for C IV, Lyα, He II (+O III]), and Si IV(+O IV]) during the same monitoring period. Finally, given the optical luminosity of NGC 5548 during our campaign, the measured Hβ lag is a factor of five shorter than the expected value implied by the R BLR -L AGN relation based on the past behavior of NGC 5548.

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“…Following Barth et al (2013), we adopt an 11 Gyr, solar metallicity, single-burst spectrum from Bruzual & Charlot (2003) to model the host galaxy starlight. This template is convolved with a Gaussian with a standard deviation of ∼15 Å to account for the spectral resolution of the data.…”

Section: Appendix B Host Contamination Of the Hβ Profilementioning

confidence: 99%

Spectroscopic Indication of a Centi-Parsec Supermassive Black Hole Binary in the Galactic Center of Ngc 5548

Wang

et al. 2016

ApJ

111

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As a natural consequence of cosmological hierarchical structure formation, sub-parsec supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) should be common in galaxies but thus far have eluded spectroscopic identification. Based on four decades of optical spectroscopic monitoring, we report that the nucleus of NGC5548, a nearby Seyfert galaxy long suspected to have experienced a major merger about 1 billion yr ago, exhibits long-term variability with a period of ∼14 yr in the optical continuum and broad Hβ emission line. Remarkably, the double-peaked profile of Hβ shows systematic velocity changes with a similar period. These pieces of observations plausibly indicate that an SMBHB resides in the center of NGC5548. The complex, secular variations in the line profiles can be explained by orbital motion of a binary with equal mass and a semimajor axis of ∼22 light-days (corresponding to ∼18 milli-parsec). At a distance of 75Mpc, NGC5548 is one of the nearest sub-parsec SMBHB candidates that offers an ideal laboratory for gravitational wave detection.

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THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT 2011: Fe II REVERBERATION FROM THE OUTER BROAD-LINE REGION

Cited by 159 publications

References 74 publications

The Structure of the Broad-line Region in Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Dynamical Modeling of Data From the AGN10 Reverberation Mapping Campaign

The Structure of the Broad-line Region in Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Dynamical Modeling of Data From the AGN10 Reverberation Mapping Campaign

Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. V. Optical Spectroscopic Campaign and Emission-line Analysis for NGC 5548

Spectroscopic Indication of a Centi-Parsec Supermassive Black Hole Binary in the Galactic Center of Ngc 5548

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