English

H$\alpha$ Reverberation Mapping of the Intermediate-Mass Active Galactic Nucleus in NGC 4395

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-11-17 v1

Abstract

We present the results of a high-cadence spectroscopic and imaging monitoring campaign of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) of NGC 4395. High signal-to-noise-ratio spectra were obtained at the Gemini-N 8 m telescope using the GMOS integral field spectrograph (IFS) on 2019 March 7, and at the Keck-I 10 m telescope using the Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) with slitmasks on 2019 March 3 and April 2. Photometric data were obtained with a number of 1 m-class telescopes during the same nights. The narrow-line region (NLR) is spatially resolved; therefore, its variable contributions to the slit spectra make the standard procedure of relative flux calibration impractical. We demonstrate that spatially-resolved data from the IFS can be effectively used to correct the slit-mask spectral light curves. While we obtained no reliable lag owing to the lack of strong variability pattern in the light curves, we constrain the broad line time lag to be less than 3 hr, consistent with the photometric lag of 80\sim80 min reported by Woo et al. (2019). By exploiting the high-quality spectra, we measure the second moment of the broad component of the Hα\alpha emission line to be 586±19586\pm19 km s1^{-1}, superseding the lower value reported by Woo et al. (2019). Combining the revised line dispersion and the photometric time lag, we update the black hole mass as (1.7±0.3)×104(1.7\pm 0.3)\times10^4 M_{\odot}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2108.07756,
  title  = {H$\alpha$ Reverberation Mapping of the Intermediate-Mass Active Galactic Nucleus in NGC 4395},
  author = {Hojin Cho and Jong-Hak Woo and Tommaso Treu and Peter R. Williams and Stephen F. Armen and Aaron J. Barth and Vardha N. Bennert and Wanjin Cho and Alexei V. Filippenko and Elena Gallo and Jaehyuk Geum and Diego González-Buitrago and Kayhan Gültekin and Edmund Hodges-Kluck and John C. Horst and Seong Hyeon Hwang and Wonseok Kang and Minjin Kim and Taewoo Kim and Douglas C. Leonard and Matthew A. Malkan and Raymond P. Remigio and David J. Sand and Jaejin Shin and Donghoon Son and Hyun-il Sung and Vivian U},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.07756},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in ApJ (Aug. 16th, 2021). 13 pages, 11 figures