J/ApJS/275/13 A uniform Hbeta RM analysis of AGNs (Wang+, 2024)
Revisiting the Hβ size-luminosity relation using a uniform
reverberation-mapping analysis.
Wang S., Woo J.-H.
<Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 275, 13 (2024)>
=2024ApJS..275...13W 2024ApJS..275...13W
ADC_Keywords: Active gal. nuclei; QSOs; Redshifts; References; Optical;
X-ray sources
Keywords: Active galactic nuclei ; Quasars ; Supermassive black holes ;
Reverberation mapping
Abstract:
We revisit the relation between active galactic nucleus (AGN)
broad-line region (BLR) size and luminosity by conducting a uniform
Hβ reverberation-mapping analysis for 212 AGNs with archival
light curves. Our analysis incorporates three different lag
measurement methods, including the interpolated cross-correlation
function (ICCF), JAVELIN, and PyROA, alongside a consistently defined
lag-searching window and an alias removal procedure. We find that
ICCF, albeit with larger uncertainties compared to other methods, is
the most reliable method based on our visual inspection of the matches
between Hβ and the shifted continuum light curves. Combining this
sample with the 32 AGNs from Seoul National University AGN Monitoring
Project, we obtain the best-fit relation between the BLR size (RBLR)
and the continuum luminosity at 5100Å (L5100) with a slope
significantly flatter than 0.5. By selecting a subsample of 157 AGNs
with the best-quality lag measurements using a set of quantitative
criteria and visual inspection, we find a consistent slope and a
slightly decreased intrinsic scatter. We further investigate the
effect of luminosity tracers, including L5100, Hβ luminosity
(LHβ), [OIII] luminosity (L[OIII]), and 2-10keV hard X-ray
luminosity L2-10keV. We find that sub-Eddington and super-Eddington
AGNs exhibit systematic offsets in both RBLR-L5100 and RBLR-LHβ
relations, while they show comparable RBLR-L[OIII] and RBLR-L2-10keV
relations. We discuss the potential causes for these different
deviations when employing different luminosity tracers.
Description:
The sample used in work consists of two parts.
First, we collected all AGNs with Hbeta reverberation-mapping (RM)
measurements published before 2022 (literature master sample), where
we found ∼280 individual lag measurements.
Second, we incorporated the lags of 32 moderate-to-high-luminosity
AGNs from the Seoul National University AGN Monitoring Project (SAMP;
Woo+ 2019JKAS...52..109W 2019JKAS...52..109W & 2024ApJ...962...67W 2024ApJ...962...67W).
For the literature master sample, we collected the Hβ and
continuum light curves for each object from the original papers to
perform a uniform lag analysis.
We also collected the host-corrected AGN continuum luminosity L5100
mainly from the database of Bentz & Katz (2015PASP..127...67B 2015PASP..127...67B) and
supplemented this database with the additional new measurements from
Dalla Bonta+ (2020, J/ApJ/903/112) as well as other individual papers.
See Section 2.
File Summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
tablea1.dat 200 212 Lag measurements and quality parameters for
literature parent sample
tablea2.dat 92 32 Lag measurements and quality parameters for the
Seoul National University AGN Monitoring Project
(SAMP) sample
tablea3.dat 98 113 Lags and luminosities in the average scheme
refs.dat 53 45 References
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also:
J/ApJ/475/469 : Composite HST Spectrum of Quasars (Zheng+ 1997)
J/ApJS/115/185 : 3C 390.3 BVRI and H photometry (Dietrich+, 1998)
J/A+A/369/57 : Monitoring Mkn 279 in BVRI and Hβ (Santos-Lleo+, 2001)
J/ApJ/613/682 : AGN central masses & broad-line region sizes (Peterson+, 2004)
J/ApJ/702/1353 : Hβ and V-band light curves of NGC 4051 (Denney+, 2009)
J/ApJ/698/895 : Variations in QSOs optical flux (Kelly+, 2009)
J/A+A/512/A34 : XMM-COSMOS Type 1 AGNs (Lusso+, 2010)
J/ApJS/194/45 : QSO properties from SDSS-DR7 (Shen+, 2011)
J/ApJ/755/60 : Reverberation mapping for five Seyfert 1 (Grier+, 2012)
J/ApJ/753/125 : NIR spectroscopy follow-up of 60 SDSS-DR7 QSOs (Shen+, 2012)
J/ApJS/206/4 : SED and bol. corrections for luminous QSOs (Krawczyk+, 2013)
J/ApJ/779/109 : Long-term monitoring of NGC 5548 (Peterson+, 2013)
J/ApJ/782/45 : SEAMBHs. I. Mrk 142, Mrk 335, and IRAS F12397+3333 (Du+, 2014)
J/ApJ/795/38 : Phot./spectroscopic measurements for KA1858+4850 (Pei+, 2014)
J/ApJ/795/149 : Reverberation mapping of NGC 7469 (Peterson+, 2014)
J/ApJ/793/108 : SEAMBHs. II. Continuum and Hbeta LCs (Wang+, 2014)
J/ApJS/217/26 : Lick AGN monitoring 2011: light curves (Barth+, 2015)
J/ApJ/806/22 : SEAMBHs IV. Hβ time lags (Du+, 2015)
J/ApJ/825/126 : SEAMBHs. V. The third year (Du+, 2016)
J/ApJ/827/118 : A new reverberation mapping campaign on NGC 5548 (Lu+, 2016)
J/ApJ/851/21 : SDSS RM project first year of observations (Grier+, 2017)
J/ApJ/866/133 : Continuum-Hβ light curves of 5 Seyfert 1 (De Rosa+, 2018)
J/ApJ/869/142 : Monitoring AGNs with Hβ Asymmetry (MAHA). I. (Du+, 2018)
J/ApJ/856/6 : SEAMBHs IX. 10 new Hβ light curves (Du+, 2018)
J/ApJ/886/42 : Reverberation mapping & opt. spectra data of AGNs (Du+, 2019)
J/ApJ/887/38 : SDSS RM Project: CIV lags & LCs from 4yrs obs. (Grier+, 2019)
J/ApJS/241/34 : The SDSS Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project (Shen+, 2019)
J/ApJ/882/4 : SDSS-RM project: Hα, Hβ & MgII lines (Wang+, 2019)
J/ApJ/876/49 : A 10yr reverberation mapping campaign for 3C273 (Zhang+, 2019)
J/ApJ/903/112 : SDSS Hb & CIV reverberation mapped AGNs (Dalla Bonta+, 2020)
J/ApJ/901/55 : SDSS-RM project: MgII lags from 4yrs obs. (Homayouni+, 2020)
J/ApJ/905/75 : 3yrs spectroscopic light curves of PG0026+129 (Hu+, 2020)
J/ApJ/897/18 : Swift UVOT observation of the radio quasar 3C 273 (Li+, 2020)
J/ApJ/901/133 : Supermassive BH masses of RM AGNs (Yu+, 2020)
J/ApJS/253/20 : SEAMBHs XII. Reberberation mapping for 15 PG QSOs (Hu+, 2021)
J/ApJ/925/52 : LAMP 2016: velocity-resolved Hb lags in Seyfert (U+, 2022)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tablea1.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 3 I3 --- Seq [0/211] Running sequence number (ID)
5- 23 A19 --- Name Object Name (Object)
25- 48 A24 --- Ref Reference paper of the light curve and
initial lag measurement (see refs.dat file)
50- 56 F7.5 --- z [0.002/1.1] Redshift of the object
58- 61 F4.2 --- Rmax [0.2/1] Maximum correlation coefficient rmax
63- 67 F5.2 --- Rmax0 [-0.07/0.93] Maximum correlation
coefficient rmax after detrending (Rmax_DE)
69- 73 F5.3 --- p-value [0/1] p-value from a cross-correlation
reliability test
75- 79 F5.1 d tauLit [1.3/307]?=-1 Literature reported rest-frame
lag measurement (TAU_LIT)
81- 84 F4.1 d e_tauLit [0.4/91]?=-1 Lower uncertainty of tauLit
86- 89 F4.1 d E_tauLit [0.4/69]?=-1 Upper uncertainty of tauLit
91- 95 F5.1 d tauICCF [-3.3/307] Final rest-frame lag measurement
based on ICCF centroids (TAU_ICCF)
97- 101 F5.1 d e_tauICCF [0.5/133] Lower uncertainty of tauICCF
103- 106 F4.1 d E_tauICCF [0.4/71] Upper uncertainty of tauICCF
108- 111 F4.2 --- FpkICCF [0.3/1] Fpeak of tauICCF (Fpeak_ICCF)
113 I1 --- DetrICCF [0/1] Flag for detrending
(1=detrended; or 0) (FlagDetrendICCF)
115 I1 --- PostICCF [1/3] Flag on posterior distributions for
ICCF centroids (1=good)
(FlagPosteriorICCF) (1)
117- 119 F3.1 --- VisICCF [1/5] Visual quality assessment of the
tauICCF (5=best quality)
(VisualInspectionICCF) (2)
121- 125 F5.1 d tauJAV [0.5/742] Final rest-frame lag measurement
based on JAVELIN (TAU_JAVELIN)
127- 131 F5.1 d e_tauJAV [0.1/193] Lower uncertainty of tauJAV
133- 137 F5.1 d E_tauJAV [0/264] Upper uncertainty of tauJAV
139- 142 F4.2 --- FpkJAV [0.27/1] Fpeak of tauJAV (Fpeak_JAVELIN)
144 I1 --- PostJAV [1/3] Flag on posterior distributions for
JAVELIN (FlagPosteriorJAVELIN) (1)
146- 150 F5.1 d tauPyROA [-39.1/219] Final rest-frame lag
measurement based on PyROA (TAU_PyROA)
152- 155 F4.1 d e_tauPyROA [0.1/91] Lower uncertainty of TAU_PyROA
157- 160 F4.1 d E_tauPyROA [0.1/72] Upper uncertainty of TAU_PyROA
162- 165 F4.2 --- FpkPyROA [0.43/1] Fpeak of TAU_PyROA (Fpeak_PyROA)
167 I1 --- PosPyROA [1/3] Flag on posterior distributions for
PyROA (FlagPosteriorPyROA) (1)
169 I1 --- Best [0/1] Best quality flag: 1=Selected; 0=Not
selected (FlagBestQuality)
171- 175 F5.2 [10-7W] LogL5100 [41.47/45.9] Log luminosity at 5100Å
177- 180 F4.2 [10-7W] e_LogL5100 [0.01/0.3] Uncertainty in LogL5100
182- 186 I5 km.s-1 FWHM [778/18920]?=-1 Collected FWHM from mean
spectra (FWHM_mean)
188- 191 I4 km.s-1 e_FWHM [1/5983]?=-1 Uncertainty of FWHM
193- 196 I4 km.s-1 sigma [493/9475]?=-1 Collected σline from
rms spectra (Sigma_rms)
198- 200 I3 km.s-1 e_sigma [5/671]?=-1 Uncertainty in sigma
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note (1): Flags on posterior distributions as follows:
1 = good;
2 = not-converged;
3 = the primary peak is affected by the boarder of the lag searching window.
Note (2): Visual quality assessment of the tauICCF, where 5 means the best
quality, while 1 means less quality.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tablea2.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 10 A10 --- Name Object Name (Object)
12- 16 F5.3 --- z [0.079/0.35] Redshift of the object
18- 22 F5.1 d tauICCF [-9/190] Final rest-frame lag measurement
based on ICCF centroids (TAU_ICCF)
24- 27 F4.1 d e_tauICCF [4/42] Lower uncertainty of TAU_ICCF
29- 32 F4.1 d E_tauICCF [4/31] Upper uncertainty of TAU_ICCF
34- 37 F4.2 --- FpkICCF [0.34/1] Fpeak of tauICCF (Fpeak_ICCF)
39- 44 F6.1 d tauJAV [-207/261] Final rest-frame lag measurement
based on JAVELIN (TAU_JAVELIN)
46- 49 F4.1 d e_tauJAV [3/23] Lower uncertainty of TAU_JAVELIN
51- 54 F4.1 d E_tauJAV [2.7/52] Upper uncertainty of TAU_JAVELIN
56- 59 F4.2 --- FpkJAV [0.4/1] Fpeak of tauJAV (Fpeak_JAVELIN)
61- 65 F5.1 d tauPyROA [-28/251] Final rest-frame lag measurement
based on PyROA (TAU_PyROA)
67- 70 F4.1 d e_tauPyROA [2/49] Lower uncertainty of TAU_PyROA
72- 75 F4.1 d E_tauPyROA [2/23.1] Upper uncertainty of TAU_PyROA
77- 79 F3.1 --- FpkPyROA [1.0] Fpeak of tauPyROA (Fpeak_PyROA)
81 I1 --- Best [0/1] Flag indicates the final selected
best-quality sample based on ICCF
(1=best quality; 0=not selected)
(FlagBestQuality_ICCF)
83- 87 F5.2 [10-7W] LogL5100 [44/45.7] Log luminosity at 5100Å
89- 92 F4.2 [10-7W] e_LogL5100 [0.01/0.02] Uncertainty in LogL5100
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tablea3.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 19 A19 --- Name Object Name (Object)
21- 26 F6.4 --- z [0.002/0.85] Redshift of the object
28- 31 F4.2 --- LogRad [0.04/2.37] Log BLR radius, light days
33- 36 F4.2 --- e_LogRad [0.01/0.41] Lower uncertainty of LogRad
(logR)
38- 41 F4.2 --- E_LogRad [0.02/0.67] Upper uncertainty of LogRad
43- 47 F5.2 [10-7W] LogL5100 [41.7/46] Log luminosity at 5100Å
49- 52 F4.2 [10-7W] e_LogL5100 [0.01/0.3] Uncertainty in LogL5100
54- 58 F5.2 [10-7W] LogLHbeta [39.79/44.1]?=-1 Log Luminosity of Broad
Hβ
60- 64 F5.2 [10-7W] e_LogLHbeta [0.01/0.28]?=-1 Uncertainty in LogLHbeta
66- 70 F5.2 [10-7W] LogLOIII [39.6/43.54]?=-1 Log luminosity of [OIII]
72- 76 F5.2 [10-7W] e_LogLOIII [0.01/0.28]?=-1 Uncertainty in LogLOIII
78- 82 F5.2 [10-7W] LogL2-10keV [42/44.66]?=-1 Log Hard X-ray luminosity
at 2-10keV from Liu+ 2021ApJ...910..103L 2021ApJ...910..103L
84- 88 F5.2 [-] LogEdd [-3/0.9] Log Eddington Ratio
(LogLambda_Edd)
90- 93 F4.2 [-] e_LogEdd [0.08/0.9] Lower uncertainty in LogEdd
95- 98 F4.2 [-] E_LogEdd [0.08/0.9] Upper uncertainty in LogEdd
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Byte-by-byte Description of file: refs.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 13 A13 --- Ref Reference code
15- 33 A19 --- BibCode Bibcode of the reference
35- 53 A19 --- Comm VizieR catalog reference
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 03-Sep-2025