Determination of the Central Mass in Active Galactic Nuclei Using Cross‐Correlation Lags and Velocity Dispersions | Zendy

Michael J. Fromerth | Zendy; Fulvio Melia | Zendy

AI Assistant Blog Pricing

Home ZAIA Blog

Open Access

Determination of the Central Mass in Active Galactic Nuclei Using Cross‐Correlation Lags and Velocity Dispersions

Author(s) -

Michael J. Fromerth,

Fulvio Melia

Publication year - 2000

Publication title -

the astrophysical journal

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.376

H-Index - 489

eISSN - 1538-4357

pISSN - 0004-637X

DOI - 10.1086/308671

Subject(s) - reverberation mapping , full width at half maximum , physics , active galactic nucleus , velocity dispersion , line (geometry) , gaussian , astrophysics , spectral line , centroid , dispersion (optics) , root mean square , correlation function (quantum field theory) , computational physics , function (biology) , galaxy , line width , optics , geometry , astronomy , mathematics , optoelectronics , quantum mechanics , dielectric , evolutionary biology , biology

We here estimate the mass M of the central object in five active galacticnuclei (AGNs), using the most recent reverberation data obtained by the AGNWatch Consortium. The cross-correlation function (CCF) centroids of the broadLy-alpha 1216 and C IV 1549 lines are used to estimate the size of thebroad-line region (BLR) in these sources. We calculate the velocity dispersionsof these lines in the root mean square (rms) spectra and then use our resultsto estimate M. We argue that our technique of calculating the velocitydispersion should work in the general case of an arbitrary line profile, unlikemethods that depend on the measurement of the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM)of the broad line. We also show that our results agree with the FWHM method inthe limit of a normal (Gaussian) line profile. The masses calculated here areconsiderably smaller than those calculated with the previous generation ofreverberation data.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

The content you want is available to Zendy users.

Already have an account? Click here to sign in.

Having issues? You can contact us here

Accelerating Research