277 research outputs found
Determining Central Black Hole Masses in Distant Active Galaxies and Quasars. II. Improved Optical and UV Scaling Relationships
We present four improved empirical relationships useful for estimating the
central black hole mass in nearby AGNs and distant luminous quasars alike using
either optical or UV single-epoch spectroscopy. These mass-scaling
relationships between line widths and luminosity are based on recently improved
empirical relationships between the broad-line region size and luminosities in
various energy bands and are calibrated to the improved mass measurements of
nearby AGNs based on emission-line reverberation mapping. The mass-scaling
relationship based on the Hbeta line luminosity allows mass estimates for
low-redshift sources with strong contamination of the optical continuum
luminosity by stellar or non-thermal emission, while that based on the C IV
lambda 1549 line dispersion allows mass estimates in cases where only the line
dispersion (as opposed to the FWHM) can be reliably determined. We estimate
that the absolute uncertainties in masses given by these mass-scaling
relationships are typically around a factor of 4. We include in an Appendix
mass estimates for all the Bright Quasar Survey (PG) quasars for which direct
reverberation-based mass measurements are not available.Comment: 48 pages including 12 figures and 7 tables. Accepted by Ap
Systematic Uncertainties in Black Hole Masses Determined from Single Epoch Spectra
We explore the nature of systematic errors that can arise in measurement of
black hole masses from single-epoch spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by
utilizing the many epochs available for NGC 5548 and PG1229+204 from
reverberation mapping databases. In particular, we examine systematics due to
AGN variability, contamination due to constant spectral components (i.e.,
narrow lines and host galaxy flux), data quality (i.e., signal-to-noise ratio,
S/N), and blending of spectral features by comparing the precision and accuracy
of single-epoch mass measurements to those of recent reverberation mapping
studies. We calculate masses by characterizing the broad Hbeta emission line by
both the full width at half maximum and the line dispersion and demonstrate the
importance of removing narrow emission-line components and host starlight. We
find that the reliability of line width measurements rapidly decreases for S/N
lower than ~10 to 20 (per pixel) and that fitting the line profiles instead of
direct measurement of the data does not mitigate this problem but can, in fact,
introduce systematic errors. We also conclude that a full spectral
decomposition to deblend the AGN and galaxy spectral features is unnecessary
except to judge the contribution of the host galaxy to the luminosity and to
deblend any emission lines that may inhibit accurate line width measurements.
Finally, we present an error budget which summarizes the minimum observable
uncertainties as well as the amount of additional scatter and/or systematic
offset that can be expected from the individual sources of error investigated.
In particular, we find that the minimum observable uncertainty in single-epoch
mass estimates due to variability is ~ 20 per pixel)
spectra.Comment: 60 pages, 20 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Variability of Fe II Emission Features in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 5548
We study the low-contrast Fe II emission blends in the ultraviolet
(1250--2200A) and optical (4000--6000A) spectra of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC
5548 and show that these features vary in flux and that these variations are
correlated with those of the optical continuum. The amplitude of variability of
the optical Fe II emission is 50% - 75% that of Hbeta and the ultraviolet Fe II
emission varies with an even larger amplitude than Hbeta. However, accurate
measurement of the flux in these blends proves to be very difficult even using
excellent Fe II templates to fit the spectra. We are able to constrain only
weakly the optical Fe II emission-line response timescale to a value less than
several weeks; this upper limit exceeds all the reliably measured emission-line
lags in this source so it is not particularly meaningful. Nevertheless, the
fact that the optical Fe II and continuum flux variations are correlated
indicates that line fluorescence in a photoionized plasma, rather than
collisional excitation, is responsible for the Fe II emission. The iron
emission templates are available upon request.Comment: 34 pages including 12 figures and 2 tables. Accepted for publication
by ApJ (tentatively in vol. 626 June 10, 2005
The Black Hole Mass-Bulge Luminosity Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei from Reverberation Mapping and Hubble Space Telescope Imaging
We investigate the relationship between black hole mass and bulge luminosity
for AGNs with reverberation-based black hole mass measurements and bulge
luminosities from two-dimensional decompositions of Hubble Space Telescope host
galaxy images. We find that the slope of the relationship for AGNs is 0.76-0.85
with an uncertainty of ~0.1, somewhat shallower than the M_BH \propto
L^{1.0+/-0.1} relationship that has been fit to nearby quiescent galaxies with
dynamical black hole mass measurements. This is somewhat perplexing, as the AGN
black hole masses include an overall scaling factor that brings the AGN
M_BH-sigma relationship into agreement with that of quiescent galaxies. We
discuss biases that may be inherent to the AGN and quiescent galaxy samples and
could cause the apparent inconsistency in the forms of their M_BH-L_bulge
relationships.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures and 2 tables, submitted to ApJ Letter
The Relationship Between Luminosity and Broad-Line Region Size in Active Galactic Nuclei
We reinvestigate the relationship between the characteristic broad-line
region size (R_blr) and the Balmer emission-line, X-ray, UV, and optical
continuum luminosities. Our study makes use of the best available
determinations of R_blr for a large number of active galactic nuclei (AGNs)
from Peterson et al. Using their determinations of R_blr for a large sample of
AGNs and two different regression methods, we investigate the robustness of our
correlation results as a function of data sub-sample and regression technique.
Though small systematic differences were found depending on the method of
analysis, our results are generally consistent. Assuming a power-law relation
R_blr \propto L^\alpha, we find the mean best-fitting \alpha is about
0.67+/-0.05 for the optical continuum and the broad H\beta luminosity, about
0.56+/-0.05 for the UV continuum luminosity, and about 0.70+/-0.14 for the
X-ray luminosity. We also find an intrinsic scatter of about 40% in these
relations. The disagreement of our results with the theoretical expected slope
of 0.5 indicates that the simple assumption of all AGNs having on average same
ionization parameter, BLR density, column density, and ionizing spectral energy
distribution, is not valid and there is likely some evolution of a few of these
characteristics along the luminosity scale.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, emulateapj, accepted for publication in The
Astrophysical Journa
The Radius-Luminosity Relationship For Active Galactic Nuclei: The Effect of Host-Galaxy Starlight On Luminosity Measurements. II. The Full Sample of Reverberation-Mapped AGNs
We present high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope images of all 35 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with optical reverberation-mapping results, which we have modeled to create a nucleus-free image of each AGN host galaxy. From the nucleus-free images, we determine the host-galaxy contribution to ground-based spectroscopic luminosity measurements at 5100 Å. After correcting the luminosities of the AGNs for the contribution from starlight, we re-examine the Hβ R_BLR-L relationship. Our best fit for the relationship gives a power-law slope of 0.52 with a range of 0.45-0.59 allowed by the uncertainties. This is consistent with our previous findings, and thus still consistent with the naive assumption that all AGNs are simply luminosity-scaled versions of each other. We discuss various consistency checks relating to the galaxy modeling and starlight contributions, as well as possible systematic errors in the current set of reverberation measurements from which we determine the form of the R_BLR-L relationship
The Black Hole Mass of NGC 4151. II. Stellar Dynamical Measurement from Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectroscopy
We present a revised measurement of the mass of the central black hole (Mbh)
in the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4151. The new stellar dynamical mass measurement is
derived by applying an axisymmetric orbit-superposition code to near-infrared
integral field data obtained using adaptive optics with the Gemini NIFS
spectrograph. When our models attempt to fit both the NIFS kinematics and
additional low spatial resolution kinematics, our results depend sensitively on
how chi-squared is computed--probably a consequence of complex bar kinematics
that manifest immediately outside the nuclear region. The most robust results
are obtained when only the high spatial resolution kinematic constraints in the
nuclear region are included in the fit. Our best estimates for the BH mass and
H-band mass-to-light ratio are Mbh~(3.76+/-1.15)E7 Msun (1-sigma error) and
M/L(H-band)~0.34+/-0.03 Msun/Lsun (3-sigma error), respectively (the quoted
errors reflect the model uncertainties). Our BH mass measurement is consistent
with estimates from both reverberation mapping (3.57[+0.45/-0.37]E7 Msun) and
gas kinematics (3.0[+0.75/-2.2]E7 Msun; 1-sigma errors), and our best-fit
mass-to-light ratio is consistent with the photometric estimate of
M/L(H-band)=0.4+/-0.2 Msun/Lsun. The NIFS kinematics give a central bulge
velocity dispersion sigma_c=116+/-3 km/s, bringing this object slightly closer
to the M-sigma relation for quiescent galaxies. Although NGC 4151 is one of
only a few Seyfert 1 galaxies in which it is possible to obtain a direct
dynamical BH mass measurement--and thus, an independent calibration of the
reverberation mapping mass scale--the complex bar kinematics makes it less than
ideally suited for this purpose.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
Simulations of the OzDES AGN Reverberation Mapping Project
As part of the OzDES spectroscopic survey we are carrying out a large scale
reverberation mapping study of 500 quasars over five years in the 30
deg area of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) supernova fields. These quasars
have redshifts ranging up to 4 and have apparent AB magnitudes between
mag. The aim of the survey is to measure time lags between
fluctuations in the quasar continuum and broad emission line fluxes of
individual objects in order to measure black hole masses for a broad range of
AGN and constrain the radius-luminosity () relationship. Here we
investigate the expected efficiency of the OzDES reverberation mapping campaign
and its possible extensions. We expect to recover lags for 35-45\% of the
quasars. AGN with shorter lags and greater variability are more likely to yield
a lag, and objects with lags 6 months or 1 year are expected be
recovered the most accurately. The baseline OzDES reverberation mapping
campaign is predicted to produce an unbiased measurement of the
relationship parameters for H, Mg II 2798, and C IV
1549. However, extending the baseline survey by either increasing the
spectroscopic cadence, extending the survey season, or improving the emission
line flux measurement accuracy will significantly improve the parameter
constraints for all broad emission lines.Comment: Published online in MNRAS. 28 page
A survey of psychological support provision for people with inflammatory arthritis in secondary care in England
© 2014 The Authors. Objectives: The consequences of inflammatory arthritis can include depression, anxiety and low mood, reducing patients' quality of life and increasing pressure on the healthcare system. Treatment guidelines recommend psychological support, but data are lacking on the provision available. Methods: A postal survey concerning psychological support provision was sent to rheumatology units in 143 acute trusts across England. Nurses from 73 rheumatology units (51%) responded. Results: Overall, 73% rated their unit's psychological support provision as 'inadequate' and only 4% rated it as 'good'. Few units believed that psychological support did not fall within their remit (12%), yet only 8% had a psychologist in the team. Most units (68%) did not routinely screen patients to identify psychological difficulties. Referral to other service providers was reported in 42% of units, with 3% very satisfied with this provision. Within units, services containing elements of psychological support ranged from occupational therapy (81%) to psychology/counselling (14%). Psychological approaches used by team members ranged from shared decision making (77%) to cognitive-behavioural approaches (26%). The current barriers to providing psychological support were lack of clinical time and available training (86% and 74%, respectively), and delivery costs (74%). Future facilitators included management support (74%) and availability of skills training (74%). Conclusions: Rheumatology units viewed psychological support provision as part of their remit but rated their overall provision as inadequate, despite some team members using psychological skills. To improve provision, clinicians' training needs must be addressed and organizational support generated, and further research needs to define adequate psychological support provision from the patient perspective
CIV Line-Width Anomalies: The Perils of Low S/N Spectra
Comparison of six high-redshift quasar spectra obtained with the Large
Binocular Telescope with previous observations from the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey shows that failure to correctly identify absorption and other problems
with accurate characterization of the CIV emission line profile in low S/N data
can severely limit the reliability of single-epoch mass estimates based on the
CIV emission line. We combine the analysis of these new high-quality data with
a reanalysis of three other samples based on high S/N spectra of the CIV
emission line region. We find that a large scatter between the Hbeta- and
CIV-based masses remains even for this high S/N sample when using the FWHM to
characterize the BLR velocity dispersion and the standard virial assumption to
calculate the mass. However, we demonstrate that using high-quality data and
the line dispersion to characterize the CIV line width leads to a high level of
consistency between CIV- and Hbeta-based masses, with <0.3 dex of observed
scatter, and an estimated ~0.2 dex intrinsic scatter, in the mass residuals.Comment: 15 pages of emulate-ApJ text, including 8 figures + 5 included
tables. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (v2 represents
changes over v1 including minor revision from referee suggestions and a newly
included discussion section showing our results in context to those of Park
et al. 2013, ApJ, 770, 87
- …