Toward measuring supermassive black hole masses with interferometric observations of the dust continuum
Toward measuring supermassive black hole masses with interferometric observations of the dust continuum
复制标题
通过对尘埃连续体的干涉观测来测量超大质量黑洞质量
DOI：
10.1051/0004-6361/202244655
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发表时间：
2023
影响因子：
6.5
通讯作者：
Eckart, A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Amorim, A.;Bourdarot, G.;Brandner, W.;Cao, Y.;Clénet, Y.;Davies, R.;de Zeeuw, P. T.;Dexter, J.;Drescher, A.;Eckart, A.
本工作的重点是活动星系核（agn）和热尘埃连续体的大小与宽线区域（BLR）之间的关系。我们发现使用光学/近红外干涉测量（OI）测量的连续尺度大约是混响映射（RM）测量的两倍。OI和RM连续体大小均与HβBLR大小密切相关，仅存在0.25指数的本征散点。因此，超大质量黑洞（BHs）的质量可以简单地从尘埃大小与宽线宽度和维里因子的结合中得出。由于这些黑洞质量的主要不确定性来自于维里因子，因此基于连续体的黑洞质量的精度接近于基于宽发射线的RM测量的精度。此外，与监测RM所需的时间相比，可以在更短的时间内获得必要的连续测量，并且比解决伴有OI的BLR所需的时间效率更高。这项工作的主要目标是通过我们对theRBLR-Rdrelation的首次校准，证明基于尘埃连续体尺寸的BH质量测量。详细讨论了当前的限制和注意事项。未来的重力观测有望改进基于连续体的方法，并有可能在低红移宇宙中测量大量agn样本的黑洞质量。
This work focuses on active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and on the relation between the sizes of the hot dust continuum and the broad-line region (BLR). We find that the continuum size measured using optical/near-infrared interferometry (OI) is roughly twice that measured by reverberation mapping (RM). Both OI and RM continuum sizes show a tight relation with the HβBLR size, with only an intrinsic scatter of 0.25 dex. The masses of supermassive black holes (BHs) can hence simply be derived from a dust size in combination with a broad line width and virial factor. Since the primary uncertainty of these BH masses comes from the virial factor, the accuracy of the continuum-based BH masses is close to those based on the RM measurement of the broad emission line. Moreover, the necessary continuum measurements can be obtained on a much shorter timescale than those required monitoring for RM, and they are also more time efficient than those needed to resolve the BLR with OI. The primary goal of this work is to demonstrate a measuring of the BH mass based on the dust-continuum size with our first calibration of theRBLR–Rdrelation. The current limitation and caveats are discussed in detail. Future GRAVITY observations are expected to improve the continuum-based method and have the potential of measuring BH masses for a large sample of AGNs in the low-redshift Universe.