English

A Microlensing Accretion Disk Size Measurement in the Lensed Quasar WFI 2026-4536

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2020-06-10 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

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{\sim}\,0.2\,\text{mag} of uncorrelated variability across all epochs and a prominent single feature of 0.1mag{\sim}\,0.1\,\text{mag} within a single season. We analyze this variability to constrain the size of the quasar's accretion disk. Adopting a nominal inclination of 60o^\text{o}, we find an accretion disk scale radius of log(rs/cm)=15.740.29+0.34\log(r_s/\text{cm}) = 15.74^{+0.34}_{-0.29} at a rest-frame wavelength of 2043\unicodexC52043\,\unicode{xC5}, and we estimate a black hole mass of log(MBH/M)=9.180.34+0.39\log(M_{\text{BH}}/M_{\odot}) = 9.18^{+0.39}_{-0.34}, 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.

Keywords

Cite

@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