The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Initial C IV lag results from four years of data
Date
09/12/2019Author
Grant ID
ST/M001296/1
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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
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Copyright © 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab4ea5
Description
K.H. acknowledges support from STFC grant ST/M001296/1.Collections
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