Masses and Spins of Black Holes in Seyfert Galaxies

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Hst Proposal Id #8240 Galaxy Structure And Dynamics

Scientific paper

About 20 bright Seyfert 1 galaxies are now known to have very broad {up to 100, 000 km s^-1} Fe KAlpha emission lines near 6.4 keV. The line profiles can be well described by a model involving Fe fluorescence in an accretion disk within 20 gravitational radii of the hole. The line profile is sensitive to the metric in this region and attempts have been made to derive the spin of the black hole for the galaxy with the best measured profile {MCG-6-30-15}. This spin measurement is controversial because of the relatively poor quality of the line profile, but soon to be launched X-ray missions {AXAF, XMM and ASTRO-E} will provide profiles of sufficient quality for spin determination. The goal of the present proposal is to measure black hole masses for a small sample of these galaxies. Knowledge of both mass and spin provides a complete description of the hole and gives many benefits, including the Eddington ratio, the influence of the hole on stars, the variability timescale of the inner disk, the radiative efficiency of accretion, the source of power for radio jets and the history of accretion by the hole. We propose STIS spectroscopy of the disk of ionized gas we have recently discovered in MCG-6-30-15 to measure, or obtain upper limits to, the mass of its black hole, and WFPC2 imaging to search for similar such disks in 7 other galaxies.

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