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The mass distribution of quasars in optical time-domain surveys

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
 [1]
  1. Xiamen University, Fujian (China)
+ Show Author Affiliations
The determination of supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses is the key to understanding the host galaxy build-up and the SMBH mass assembly histories. The SMBH masses of non-local quasars are frequently estimated via the single-epoch virial black-hole mass estimators, which may suffer from significant biases. Here we demonstrate a new approach to infer the mass distribution of SMBHs in quasars by modelling quasar ultraviolet /optical variability. Here, our inferred black hole masses are systematically smaller than the virial ones by 0.3–0.6 dex; the ∼0.3 dex offsets are roughly consistent with the expected biases of the virial black-hole mass estimators. In the upcoming time-domain astronomy era, our methodology can be used to constrain the cosmic evolution of quasar mass distributions.
Research Organization:
US Department of Energy (USDOE), Washington, DC (United States). Office of Science, Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Natural Science Foundation of China; National Science Foundation (NSF); Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province
OSTI ID:
2425343
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Journal Name: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 521; ISSN 1365-2966; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Oxford University PressCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics
accretion
accretion discs
quasars: general
quasars: supermassive black holes