We use thirteen seasons of R-band photometry from the 1.2m Leonard Euler Swiss Telescope at La Silla to examine microlensing variability in the quadruply-imaged lensed quasar WFI 2026-4536. The lightcurves exhibit ∼0.2mag of uncorrelated variability across all epochs and a prominent single feature of ∼0.1mag within a single season. We analyze this variability to constrain the size of the quasar's accretion disk. Adopting a nominal inclination of 60o, we find an accretion disk scale radius of log(rs/cm)=15.74−0.29+0.34 at a rest-frame wavelength of 2043\unicodexC5, and we estimate a black hole mass of log(MBH/M⊙)=9.18−0.34+0.39, based on the CIV line in VLT spectra. This size measurement is fully consistent with the Quasar Accretion Disk Size - Black Hole Mass relation, providing another system in which the accretion disk is larger than predicted by thin disk theory.
@article{arxiv.1911.06218,
title = {A Microlensing Accretion Disk Size Measurement in the Lensed Quasar WFI 2026-4536},
author = {Matthew A. Cornachione and Christopher W. Morgan and Martin Millon and Misty C. Bentz and Frederic Courbin and Vivien Bonvin and Emilio E. Falco},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.06218},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
26 pages, 8 figures, Appendix with data table, pg 12-25