Recalibrating Single-epoch Black Hole Mass Estimates

Details Recalibrating Single-epoch Black Hole Mass Estimates Recalibrating Single-epoch Black Hole Mass Estimates

Jan 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21943510w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #435.10

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Using the high-quality multi-epoch spectra of 9 Seyfert 1 galaxies from the Lick AGN Monitoring Project, we investigate uncertainties of black hole mass estimates, and calibrate mass estimators based on the reverberation results. First, we introduce new methods to improve the root-mean-square (rms) spectra by adopting spectral decomposition and S/N weighting of each singe-epoch (SE) spectra, leading to substantially improved quality of the rms spectra. Second, based on the variability of the Hβ line width and AGN continuum luminosity, we estimate the uncertainty in SE mass estimates due to the combined variability as 12%. This is much lower than the total uncertainty 0.46 dex (factor of 3), which is dominated by uncertainties in virial coefficient. Third, we find that the Hβ line is broader in SE spectra than in the rms spectra by 25%. To correct for this systematic difference, we recalibrate the SE black hole mass estimators by introducing a line-width dependent virial factor.
This work has been supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2010-0021558).

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