English

Calibrating CIV-based black hole mass estimators

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-06-15 v2

Abstract

We present the single-epoch black hole mass estimators based on the CIV (1549 A) broad emission line, using the updated sample of the reverberation-mapped AGNs and high-quality UV spectra. By performing multi-component spectral fitting analysis, we measure the CIV line widths (FWHM_CIV) and line dispersion (sigma_CIV) and the continuum luminosity at 1350 A (L_1350) to calibrate the CIV-based mass estimators. By comparing with the Hbeta reverberation-based masses, we provide new mass estimators with the best-fit relationships, i.e., M_BH \propto L_1350 ^ (0.50+-0.07) sigma_CIV ^2 and M_BH \propto L_1350 ^ (0.52+-0.09) FWHM_CIV ^ (0.56+-0.48). The new CIV-based mass estimators show significant mass-dependent systematic difference compared to the estimators commonly used in the literature. Using the published Sloan Digital Sky Survey QSO catalog, we show that the black hole mass of high-redshift QSOs decreases on average by ~0.25 dex if our recipe is adopted.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1304.7281,
  title  = {Calibrating CIV-based black hole mass estimators},
  author = {Daeseong Park and Jong-Hak Woo and Kelly Denney and Jaejin Shin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.7281},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

12 pages, 7 figures, ApJ in press, figure revised

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:07:12.719Z