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Title: Dust Reverberation Mapping in Distant Quasars from Optical and Mid-infrared Imaging Surveys

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
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  1. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
  2. Univ. of Sao Paulo (Brazil); Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia (LIneA), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  3. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
  4. Autonomous Univ. of Madrid (Spain)
  5. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
  6. National Centre for Scientific Research-Mixed Organizations (CNRS-UMR), Paris (France); Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France)
  7. Univ. College London (United Kingdom)
  8. Stanford Univ., CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  9. Univ. of La Laguna, San Cristobal de La Laguna (Spain)
  10. Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia (LIneA), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  11. Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT), Madrid (Spain)
  12. Indian Inst. of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad (India)
  13. Inst. d' Estudis Espacials de Cataunya (IEEC), Barcelona (Spain)
  14. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)
  15. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
  16. Univ. of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD (Australia)
  17. Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States). Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics
  18. The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
  19. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  20. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  21. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
  22. Univ. Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain). Inst. Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA) and Inst. de Fisica d'Altes Energies (IFAE)
  23. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States); Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
  24. Univ. of Sussex, Brighton (United Kingdom)
  25. Inst. d' Estudis Espacials de Cataunya (IEEC), Barcelona (Spain); Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), Madrid (Spain)
  26. Univ. of Southampton (United Kingdom)
  27. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  28. Max Planck Inst. fuer Extraterrestrische Physik, Garching (Germany); Ludwig Maximilian Univ. of Munich, Munich (Germany)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The size of the dust torus in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and their high-luminosity counterparts, quasars, can be inferred from the time delay between UV/optical accretion disk continuum variability and the response in the mid-infrared (MIR) torus emission. This dust reverberation mapping (RM) technique has been successfully applied to ~70 z≲0.3 AGN and quasars. Here we present first results of our dust RM program for distant quasars covered in the SDSS Stripe 82 region combining ~20-yr ground-based optical light curves with 10-yr MIR light curves from the WISE satellite. We measure a high-fidelity lag between W1-band (3.4 μm) and g band for 587 quasars over 0.3≲z≲2 (⟨z⟩~0.8) and two orders of magnitude in quasar luminosity. They tightly follow (intrinsic scatter ~0.17 dex in lag) the IR lag-luminosity relation observed for z<0.3 AGN, revealing a remarkable size-luminosity relation for the dust torus over more than four decades in AGN luminosity, with little dependence on additional quasar properties such as Eddington ratio and variability amplitude. This study motivates further investigations in the utility of dust RM for cosmology, and strongly endorses a compelling science case for the combined 10-yr Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (optical) and 5-yr Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope 2μm light curves in a deep survey for low-redshift AGN dust RM with much lower luminosities and shorter, measurable IR lags. The compiled optical and MIR light curves for 7,384 quasars in our parent sample are made public with this work.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Contributing Organization:
DES Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-07CH11359; AST-0908816; AST-1515927; AST-0909182; AST-1440341; AST-1715579; AST-1238877; NNX08AR22G; NNG05GF22G; SC0019193
OSTI ID:
1674989
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1784525
Report Number(s):
arXiv:2007.02402; FERMILAB-PUB-20-544-AD-AE-SCD; oai:inspirehep.net:1815957; TRN: US2203984
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 900, Issue 1; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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