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The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping project : composite lags at z ≤ 1

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Date
01/09/2017
Author
Li, Jennifer
Shen, Yue
Horne, Keith
Brandt, W. N.
Greene, Jenny E.
Grier, C. J.
Ho, Luis C.
Kochanek, Chris
Schneider, Donald P.
Trump, Jonathan R.
Dawson, Kyle S.
Pan, Kaike
Bizyaev, Dmitry
Oravetz, Daniel
Simmons, Audrey
Malanushenko, Elena
Funder
Science & Technology Facilities Council
Grant ID
ST/M001296/1
Keywords
Black hole physics
Galaxies: active
Line: profiles
Quasars: general
Surveys
QB Astronomy
QC Physics
3rd-DAS
Metadata
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Abstract
We present composite broad-line region (BLR) reverberation mapping lag measurements for Hα, Hβ, He II λ4686, and Mg II for a sample of 144, z ≲ 1 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project. Using only the 32-epoch spectroscopic light curves in the first six-month season of SDSS-RM observations, we compile correlation function measurements for individual objects and then coadd them to allow the measurement of the average lags for our sample at mean redshifts of 0.4 (for Hα) and ∼0.65 (for the other lines). At similar quasar luminosities and redshifts, the sample-averaged lag decreases in the order of Mg II, Hα, Hβ, and He II. This decrease in lags is accompanied by an increase in the mean line width of the four lines, and is roughly consistent with the virialized motion for BLR gas in photoionization equilibrium. These are among the first RM measurements of stratified BLR structure at z > 0.3. Dividing our sample by luminosity, Hα shows clear evidence of increasing lags with luminosity, consistent with the expectation from the measured BLR size-luminosity relation based on Hβ. The other three lines do not show a clear luminosity trend in their average lags due to the limited dynamic range of luminosity probed and the poor average correlation signals in the divided samples, a situation that will be improved with the incorporation of additional photometric and spectroscopic data from SDSS-RM. We discuss the utility and caveats of composite lag measurements for large statistical quasar samples with reverberation mapping data
Citation
Li , J , Shen , Y , Horne , K , Brandt , W N , Greene , J E , Grier , C J , Ho , L C , Kochanek , C , Schneider , D P , Trump , J R , Dawson , K S , Pan , K , Bizyaev , D , Oravetz , D , Simmons , A & Malanushenko , E 2017 , ' The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping project : composite lags at z ≤ 1 ' , Astrophysical Journal , vol. 846 , no. 1 , 79 . https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa845d
Publication
Astrophysical Journal
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa845d
ISSN
0004-637X
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017, The American Astronomical Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at iopscience.iop.org / https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa845d
Description
Funding: STFC grant ST/M001296/1 (KH).
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11708

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