Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 1995
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995mnras.276..933r&link_type=abstract
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 276, Issue 3, pp. 933-943.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
10
Line: Profiles, Galaxies: Active, Galaxies: Nuclei, Quasars: Emission Lines, Quasars: General, Galaxies: Seyfert
Scientific paper
It is an implicit consequence of the conventional picture of the broad-emission-line region (BLR) of active galactic nuclei (AGN) that the transfer function which describes the line response to ionizing continuum fluctuations must be closely related to the line profile shape. It also seems likely that the wide diversity of profile shapes and widths present among the AGN population reflects a variation in some important property of the BLR. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the relationship between the transfer function and the line profile shape if the diversity in the latter is attributed to differences in the spatial distribution of the emitting gas. The observed ranges in profile shape and width imply wide variations in the speed and strength of the line response, even for AGN of similar continuum luminosity. In particular, if the BLR is dominated by Keplerian dynamics, both the transfer function centroid and the amplitude of the line response to an isolated continuum pulse will vary by a factor of 10 or more. The possibility of such large differences in emission-line variability behaviour raises the concern that results from recent reverberation mapping studies, which have sampled only AGN capable of responding vigorously to continuum variations, may not be directly applicable to the AGN population as a whole.
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