The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Initial C IV lag results from four years of data
Abstract
We present reverberation-mapping (RM) lags and black hole mass measurements using the C iv λ1549 broad emission line from a sample of 348 quasars monitored as a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey RM Project. Our data span four years of spectroscopic and photometric monitoring for a total baseline of 1300 days, allowing us to measure lags up to ~750 days in the observed frame (this corresponds to a rest-frame lag of ~300 days in a quasar at z = 1.5 and ~190 days at z = 3). We report significant time delays between the continuum and the C iv λ1549 emission line in 48 quasars, with an estimated false-positive detection rate of 10%. Our analysis of marginal lag measurements indicates that there are on the order of ~100 additional lags that should be recoverable by adding more years of data from the program. We use our measurements to calculate black hole masses and fit an updated C iv radius–luminosity relationship. Our results significantly increase the sample of quasars with C iv RM results, with the quasars spanning two orders of magnitude in luminosity toward the high-luminosity end of the C iv radius–luminosity relation. In addition, these quasars are located at some of the highest redshifts (z ≈ 1.4–2.8) of quasars with black hole masses measured with RM. This work constitutes the first large sample of C iv RM measurements in more than a dozen quasars, demonstrating the utility of multiobject RM campaigns.
Citation
Grier , C J , Shen , Y , Horne , K , Brandt , W N , Trump , J R , Hall , P B , Kinemuchi , K , Starkey , D , Schneider , D P , Ho , L C , Homayouni , Y , Li , J I , McGreer , I D , Peterson , B M , Bizyaev , D , Chen , Y , Dawson , K S , Eftekharzadeh , S , Guo , Y , Jia , S , Jiang , L , Kneib , J-P , Li , F , Li , Z , Nie , J , Oravetz , A , Oravetz , D , Pan , K , Petitjean , P , Ponder , K A , Rogerson , J , Vivek , M , Zhang , T & Zou , H 2019 , ' The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Initial C IV lag results from four years of data ' , Astrophysical Journal , vol. 887 , no. 1 , 38 , pp. 1-27 . https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab4ea5
Publication
Astrophysical Journal
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0004-637XType
Journal article
Description
K.H. acknowledges support from STFC grant ST/M001296/1.Collections
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