COMPARING SINGLE-EPOCH VIRIAL BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATORS FOR LUMINOUS QUASARS
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, MS-51, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
Single-epoch virial black hole (BH) mass estimators utilizing broad emission lines have been routinely applied to high-redshift quasars to estimate their BH masses. Depending on the redshift, different line estimators (H{alpha}, H{beta}, Mg II {lambda}2798, C IV {lambda}1549) are often used with optical/near-infrared spectroscopy. Here, we use a homogeneous sample of 60 intermediate-redshift (z {approx} 1.5-2.2) Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasars with optical and near-infrared spectra covering C IV through H{alpha} to investigate the consistency between different single-epoch virial BH mass estimators. We critically compare rest-frame UV line estimators (C IV {lambda}1549, C III] {lambda}1908, and Mg II {lambda}2798) with optical estimators (H{beta} and H{alpha}) in terms of correlations between line widths and between continuum/line luminosities, for the high-luminosity regime (L{sub 5100} > 10{sup 45.4} erg s{sup -1}) probed by our sample. The continuum luminosities of L{sub 1350} and L{sub 3000}, and the broad-line luminosities are well correlated with L{sub 5100}, reflecting the homogeneity of quasar spectra in the rest-frame UV-optical, among which L{sub 1350} and the line luminosities for C IV and C III] have the largest scatter in the correlation with L{sub 5100}. We found that the Mg II FWHM correlates well with the FWHMs of the Balmer lines and that the Mg II line estimator can be calibrated to yield consistent virial mass estimates with those based on the H{beta}/H{alpha} estimators, thus extending earlier results on less luminous objects. The C IV FWHM is poorly correlated with the Balmer line FWHMs, and the scatter between the C IV and H{beta} FWHMs consists of an irreducible part ({approx}0.12 dex), and a part that correlates with the blueshift of the C IV centroid relative to that of H{beta}, similar to earlier studies comparing C IV with Mg II. The C III] FWHM is found to correlate with the C IV FWHM, and hence is also poorly correlated with the H{beta} FWHM. While the C IV and C III] lines can be calibrated to yield consistent virial mass estimates as H{beta} on average, the scatter is substantially larger than Mg II, and the usage of C IV/C III] FWHM in the mass estimators does not improve the agreement with the H{beta} estimator. We discuss controversial claims in the literature on the correlation between C IV and H{beta} FWHMs, and suggest that the reported correlation is either a result based on small samples or only valid for low-luminosity objects.
- OSTI ID:
- 22039400
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 753, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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