Quasar emission lines as virial luminosity estimators
P. Marziani, E. Bon, N. Bon, M. L. Martinez-Aldama, G. M. Stirpe, M. D'Onofrio, A. del Olmo, C. A. Negrete, D. Dultzin
备注：
Submitted as part of the special issue "Spectral Line Shapes in Astrophysics and Related Topics" to appear in the Contributions of the Astronomical Observatory of Skalnate' Pleso; 13 pages, 5 figures
Quasars accreting matter at very high rates (known as extreme Population A [xA]) may provide a new class of distance indicators covering cosmic epochs from present day up to less than 1 Gyr from the Big Bang. We report on the developments of a method that is based on "virial luminosity" estimates from measurements of emission line widths of xA quasars. The approach is conceptually equivalent to the virial estimates based on early and late type galaxies. The main issues related to the cosmological application of luminosity estimates from xA quasar line widths are the identification of proper emission lines whose broadening is predominantly virial over a wide range of luminosity, and the assessment of the effect of the emitting region orientation with respect to the line of sight. We report on recent developments concerning the use of the AlIII 1860 intermediate ionisation line and of the Hydrogen Balmer line H$β$ as "virial broadening estimators."
Under the hypothesis of gravitational redshift induced by the central supermassive black hole, and based on line widths and shifts of redward shifted H$β$ and Fe ii broad emission lines for a sample of 1973 $z<0.8$ SDSS DR5 quasars, we measured the virial factor in determining supermassive black hole masses, usually estimated by the reverberation mapping (RM) method or the relevant secondary methods. The virial factor had been believed to be from the geometric effect of broad-line region. The measured virial factor of Fe ii is larger than that of H$β$ for 98% of these quasars. The virial facto…
We test the usefulness of the intermediate ionisation lines AlIII 1860 and CIII] 1909 as reliable virial mass estimators for quasars. We identify a sample of 309 quasars from the SDSS DR16 in the redshift range 1.2 < z < 1.4 to have [OII] 3728 recorded on the same spectrum of AlIII 1860, SiIII 1890, and CIII] 1909. We set the systemic quasar redshift using careful measurements of [OII]. We then classified the sources as Population A, extreme Population A (xA) and Population B, and analysed the 1900Å blend using multi-component models to look for systematic line shifts of the AlIII and CIII] al…
The identification of a virial broadening estimator in the quasar UV rest frame suitable for black hole mass computation at high redshift has become an important issue. We compare the HI Balmer H-beta line width to the ones of two intermediate ionization lines: the Aliii 1860 doublet and the Ciii] 1909 line, over a wide interval of redshift and luminosity (0 < z < 3.5; 43 < logL < 48.5 [erg a/]), for 48 sources belonging to the quasar population characterized by mid-to-high values of the Eddington ratio (Population A). The present analysis indicates that the line width of Aliii 1860 and H-beta…
The determination of supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses is the key to understanding the host galaxy build-up and the SMBH mass assembly histories. The SMBH masses of non-local quasars are frequently estimated via the single-epoch virial black-hole mass estimators, which may suffer from significant biases. Here we demonstrate a new approach to infer the mass distribution of SMBHs in quasars by modelling quasar UV/optical variability. Our inferred black hole masses are systematically smaller than the virial ones by $0.3\sim 0.6$ dex; the $\sim 0.3$ dex offsets are roughly consistent with the …
We intend to use the impact of microlensing on the Fe III emission line blend along with a measure of its gravitational redshift to estimate the mass of the quasar's central supermassive black hole (SMBH). We fit the Fe III feature in multiple spectroscopic observations between 2008 and 2016 of the gravitationally lensed quasar Q 0957+561 with relatively high signal-to-noise ratios (at the adequate wavelength). Based on the statistics of microlensing magnifications, we used a Bayesian method to derive the size of its emitting region. The Fe III spectral feature appears systematically redshifte…
Assuming a gravitational origin for the Fe III$λλ$2039-2113 redshift and using microlensing based estimates of the size of the region emitting this feature, we obtain individual measurements of the virial factor, $f$, in 10 quasars. The average values for the Balmer lines, $\langle f_{Hβ}\rangle={\bf 0.43\pm 0.20}$ and $\langle f_{Hα}\rangle={\bf 0.50\pm 0.24}$, are in good agreement with the results of previous studies for objects with lines of comparable widths. In the case of Mg II, consistent results, $f_{Mg II} \sim {\bf 0.44}$, can be also obtained accepting a reasonable scaling for the …
We characterize the physical properties of the cool T ~10^4 K circumgalactic medium surrounding z ~2-3 quasar host galaxies, which are predicted to evolve into present day massive ellipticals. Using a statistical sample of 14 quasar pairs with projected separation < 300 kpc and high dispersion, high S/N spectra, we find extreme kinematics with low metal ion lines typically spanning ~ 500 km/s, exceeding any previously studied galactic population. The CGM is significantly enriched, even beyond the virial radius, with a median metallicity [M/H] ~ -0.6. The alpha/Fe abundance ratio is enhanced, s…
Estimators of Bolometric Luminosity and Black Hole Mass with Mid-infrared Continuum Luminosities for Dust-obscured Quasars: Prevalence of Dust-obscured SDSS Quasars
The width of the broad emission lines in quasars is commonly characterized either by the full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) or the square root of the second moment of the line profile ($σ_{\rm line}$), and used as an indicator of the virial velocity of the broad-line region (BLR) in the estimation of black hole (BH) mass. We measure FWHM and $σ_{\rm line}$ for H$α$, H$β$ and Mg II broad lines in both the mean and root-mean-square (rms) spectra of a large sample of quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project. We introduce a new quantitative recipe to measure…
Mass estimators are a key tool to infer the dark matter content in pressure-supported systems like dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). We construct an estimator for enclosed masses based on the virial theorem which is insensitive to anisotropy in the velocity dispersion and tailored to yield masses with minimum uncertainty introduced by our ignorance on (i) the shape of the inner halo profile, and (ii) how deeply the stellar component is embedded within the halo: $M(<1.8\,R_\mathrm{h}) \approx 3.5 \times 1.8\,R_\mathrm{h} \langle σ_\mathrm{los}^2 \rangle G^{-1}$, where by $R_\mathrm{h}$ we deno…
Virial-based methods for estimating active supermassive black hole masses are now commonly used on extremely large spectroscopic quasar catalogues. Most spectral analyses, though, do not pay enough attention to a detailed continuum decomposition. To understand how this affects virial mass estimate results, we test the influence of host galaxy light on them, along with Balmer continuum component. A detailed fit with the new spectroscopic analysis software QSFit demonstrated that the presence or absence of continuum components do not affect significantly the virial-based results for our sample. …
The CIV broad emission line is visible in optical spectra to redshifts exceeding z~5. CIV has long been known to exhibit significant displacements to the blue and these `blueshifts' almost certainly signal the presence of strong outflows. As a consequence, single-epoch virial black hole (BH) mass estimates derived from CIV velocity-widths are known to be systematically biased compared to masses from the hydrogen Balmer lines. Using a large sample of 230 high-luminosity (log $L_{\rm Bol}$ = 45.5-48 erg/s), redshift 1.5<z<4.0 quasars with both CIV and Balmer line spectra, we have quantified the …
Black-hole masses are crucial to understanding the physics of the connection between quasars and their host galaxies and measuring cosmic black hole-growth. At high redshift, z > 2.1, black hole masses are normally derived using the velocity-width of the CIV broad emission line, based on the assumption that the observed velocity-widths arise from virial-induced motions. In many quasars, the CIV-emission line exhibits significant blue asymmetries (`blueshifts') with the line centroid displaced by up to thousands of km/s to the blue. These blueshifts almost certainly signal the presence of stron…
Quasars accreting matter at very high rates (known as extreme Population A [xA] quasars, possibly associated with super-Eddington accreting massive black holes) may provide a new class of distance indicators covering cosmic epochs from present day up to less than 1 Gyr from the Big Bang. At a more fundamental level, xA quasars are of special interest in studies of the physics of AGNs and host galaxy evolution. However, their observational properties are largely unknown. xA quasars can be identified in relatively large numbers from major optical surveys over a broad range of redshifts, thanks t…
We identify Local Group (LG) analogs in the IllustrisTNG cosmological simulation, and use these to study two mass estimators for the LG: one based on the timing argument (TA) and one based on the virial theorem (VT). Including updated measurements of the Milky Way-M31 tangential velocity and the cosmological constant, we show that the TA mass estimator slightly overestimates the true median LG-mass, though the ratio of the TA to the true mass is consistent at the approximate 90\% c.l. These are in broad agreement with previous results using dark matter-only simulations. We show that the VT est…
Accurately weigh the masses of SMBH in AGN is currently possible for only a small group of local and bright broad-line AGN through reverberation mapping (RM). Statistical demographic studies can be carried out considering the empirical scaling relation between the size of the BLR and the AGN optical continuum luminosity. However, there are still biases against low-luminosity or reddened AGN, in which the rest-frame optical radiation can be severely absorbed/diluted by the host and the BLR emission lines could be hard to detect. Our purpose is to widen the applicability of virial-based SE relat…
We studied the spectra of six $z \sim 2.2$ quasars obtained with the X-shooter spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope. The redshift of these sources and X-shooter's spectral coverage allow us to cover the rest spectral range $\sim1200 - 7000$Å for the simultaneous detection of optical and ultraviolet lines emitted by the Broad Line Region. Simultaneous measurements, avoiding issues related to quasars variability, help us understanding the connection between different Broad Line Region line profiles generally used as virial estimators of Black Holes masses in quasars. The goal of this work is…
The inter-line comparison between high- and low-ionization emission lines has yielded a wealth of information on the quasar broad line region (BLR) structure and dynamics, including perhaps the earliest unambiguous evidence in favor of a disk + wind structure in radio-quiet quasars. We carried out an analysis of the CIV 1549 and Hbeta line profiles of 28 Hamburg-ESO high luminosity quasars and of 48 low-z, low luminosity sources in order to test whether the high-ionization line CIV 1549 width could be correlated with Hbeta and be used as a virial broadening estimator. We analyze intermediate- …
Quasars accreting matter at very high rates (known as extreme Population A [xA] or super-Eddington accreting massive black holes) provide a new class of distance indicators covering cosmic epochs from the present-day Universe up to less than 1 Gyr from the Big Bang. The very high accretion rate makes it possible that massive black holes hosted in xA quasars radiate at a stable, extreme luminosity-to-mass ratio. This in turns translates into stable physical and dynamical conditions of the mildly ionized gas in the quasar low-ionization line emitting region. In this contribution, we analyze the …
In this paper we probe the hot, post-shock gas component of quasar-driven winds through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. Combining datasets from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the $\textit{Herschel}$ Space Observatory, and the Very Large Array, we measure average spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 109,829 optically-selected, radio quiet quasars from 1.4~GHz to 3000~GHz in six redshift bins between $0.3<z<3.5$. We model the emission components in the radio and far-infrared, plus a spectral distortion from the tSZ effect. At $z>1.91$, we measure the tSZ effect at $3.8σ$ signif…
We report the fourth installment in the series of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) Quasar Survey, which includes quasars observed between September, 2017 and June, 2021. There are in total 13,066 quasars reliably identified, of which 6,685 are newly discovered that are not reported in the SDSS DR14 quasar catalog or Million Quasars catalog. Because LAMOST does not provide accurate absolute flux calibration, we re-calibrate the spectra with the SDSS/Pan-STARRS1 multi-band photometric data. The emission line properties of H$α$, H$β$, Mg\,{\sc ii} and C\,{\sc…
Dependence between some spectral and physical characteristics of quasars
使用192个复合光谱堆叠从单独的SDSS DR 7类星体光谱的子样本，在光谱指数，$α_λ$，和在1450 ° C，$\log{l_{1450}}$的单色光度的对数分箱，我们发现，有一个依赖的发射线等效宽度（EW）的光谱指数（相关或反相关）的一些线，主要是那些线的鲍德温效应被检测到。我们还证明了类星体中心超大质量黑洞的维里质量与其谱指数$α_λ$之间没有依赖关系。
We test the recently proposed (Mediavilla et al. 2018) black hole mass scaling relationship based on the redshift {with respect to the quasar's rest frame} of the Fe III$λλ$2039-2113 line blend. To this end, we fit this feature in the spectra of a well suited sample of quasars, observed with X-shooter at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), whose masses have been independently estimated using the virial theorem. For the quasars of this sample we consistently confirm the redshift of the Fe III$λλ$2039-2113 blend and find that it correlates with the squared widths of H$β$, H$α$ and Mg II, which are c…
Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. XII. Reverberation Mapping Results for 15 PG Quasars from a Long-Duration High-Cadence Campaign
We present an analysis of UV spectra of quasars at intermediate redshifts believed to belong to the extreme Population A (xA), aimed to estimate the chemical abundances of the broad line emitting gas. We follow the approach described in a previous work extending the sample to 42 sources. Our aim is to test the robustness of the analysis carried out previously, as well as to confirm the two most intriguing results of this investigation: evidence of very high solar metallicities, and deviation of the relative abundance of elements with respect to solar values. The basis of our analysis is multi-…
Spectroastrometry and Reverberation Mapping (SARM) of Active Galactic Nuclei. I. The H$β$ Broad-line Region Structure and Black Hole Mass of Five Quasars
We use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Data Release 12 (DR12Q), containing nearly 300,000 AGNs, to calculate the monochromatic luminosities at 5100Å, 3000Å, and 1350Å, derived from the broad-band extinction-corrected SDSS magnitudes. After matching them to their counterparts based on spectra and published in the SDSS Quasar Data Release 7 (DR7Q), we find perfect correlations with minute mean offsets ($\sim$0.01 dex) and dispersions of differences of 0.11, 0.10, 0.12 dex, respectively, across a 2.5 dex luminosity range. We then estimate the active galactic nuclei (AGNs) black hole ma…
We find that the Fe III$λλ$2039-2113 spectral feature in quasars appears systematically redshifted by amounts accountable under the hypothesis of gravitational redshift induced by the central supermassive black hole. Our analysis of 27 composite spectra from the BOSS survey indicates that the redshift and the broadening of the lines in the Fe III$λλ$2039-2113 blend roughly follow the expected correlation in the weak limit of Schwarzschild geometry for virialized kinematics. Assuming that the Fe III UV redshift provides a measure of $M_{BH}\over R$ (${Δλ\over λ}\simeq{3\over2}{G\over c^2} {M_{B…
We report on three redshift $z>2$ quasars with dramatic changes in their C IV emission lines, the first sample of changing-look quasars (CLQs) at high redshift. This is also the first time the changing-look behaviour has been seen in a high-ionisation emission line. SDSS J1205+3422, J1638+2827, and J2228+2201 show interesting behaviour in their observed optical light curves, and subsequent spectroscopy shows significant changes in the C IV broad emission line, with both line collapse and emergence being displayed on rest-frame timescales of $\sim$240-1640 days. These are rapid changes, especia…
We study the demographics of z ~ 6 broad-line quasars in the black hole (BH) mass-luminosity plane using a sample of more than 100 quasars at 5.7 < z < 6.5. These quasars have well quantified selection functions and nearly one third of them also have virial BH masses estimated from near-IR spectroscopy. We use forward modeling of parameterized intrinsic distributions of BH masses and Eddington ratios, and account for the sample flux limits and measurement uncertainties of the BH masses and luminosities. We find significant differences between the intrinsic and observed distributions of the qua…
Using the quasars with z_em < 0.9 from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, we measure the spectral characteristics, including continuum and emission lines, around the Hbeta and Halpha spectral regions, which are lacking in Quasar Data Release 12 (DR12Q). We estimate the virial black hole mass from broad Halpha and/or \hbeta, and infer quasar redshifts from O III5007 emission lines. All the measurements and derived quantities are publicly available. The comparison between O III5007 based redshifts and the visual inspection redshifts included in DR12Q indicates that the visual inspectio…
Precise measurements of black hole masses are essential to understanding the coevolution of these sources and their host galaxies. We develop a novel approach for computing black hole virial masses using measurements of continuum luminosities and emission line widths from partially overlapping, narrow-band observations of quasars; we refer to this technique as single-epoch photometry. This novel method relies on forward-modelling quasar observations for estimating emission line widths, which enables unbiased measurements even for lines coarsely resolved by narrow-band data. We assess the perfo…
We present Adaptive Optics assisted near-IR integral field spectroscopic observations of a luminous quasar at $z = 2.4$, previously observed as the first known example at high redshift of large scale quasar-driven outflow quenching star formation in its host galaxy. The nuclear spectrum shows broad and blueshifted H$β$ in absorption, which is tracing outflowing gas with high densities ($>10^8$ - $10^9$ cm$^{-3}$) and velocities in excess of 10,000 km s$^{-1}$. The properties of the outflowing clouds (covering factor, density, column density and inferred location) indicate that they likely orig…
The galactocentric distance of quasar absorption outflows are conventionally determined using absorption troughs from excited states, a method hindered by severely saturated or self-blended absorption troughs. We propose a novel method to estimate the size of a broad absorption line (BAL) region which partly obscures an emission line region by assuming virialized gas in the emission region surrounding a supermassive black hole with known mass. When a spiky Lya1216 line emission is present at the flat bottom of the deep Nv1240 absorption trough, the size of BAL region can be estimated. We have …
We present rest-frame optical spectra of 12 nitrogen-loud quasars at z ~ 2.2, whose rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) spectra show strong nitrogen broad emission lines. To investigate their narrow-line region (NLR) metallicities, we measure the equivalent width (EW) of the [OIII]5007 emission line: if the NLR metallicity is remarkably high as suggested by strong UV nitrogen lines, the [OIII]5007 line flux should be very week due to the low equilibrium temperature of the ionized gas owing to significant metal cooling. In the result, we found that our spectra show moderate EW of the [OIII]5007 line si…
We present ALMA observations of cold dust and molecular gas in four high-luminosity, heavily reddened (A$_{\rm{V}} \sim 2.5-6$ mag) Type 1 quasars at $z\sim2.5$ with virial M$_{\rm{BH}} \sim 10^{10}$M$_\odot$, to test whether dusty, massive quasars represent the evolutionary link between submillimetre bright galaxies (SMGs) and unobscured quasars. All four quasars are detected in both the dust continuum and in the $^{12}$CO(3-2) line. The mean dust mass is 6$\times$10$^{8}$M$_\odot$ assuming a typical high redshift quasar spectral energy distribution (T=41K, $β$=1.95 or T=47K, $β$=1.6). The im…
We present a multiwavelength spectral study of the quasar HE0359-3959, which has been identified as an extreme radiating source at intermediate redshift (z=1.5209). Along the spectral range, the different ionic species give information about the substructures in the broad line region. The presence of a powerful outflow with an extreme blueshifted velocity of $\sim$-6000$\pm$500 km s$^{-1}$ is shown in the CIVλ1549 emission line. A prominent blueshifted component is also associated with the 1900Å blend, resembling the one observed in CIVλ1549. We detect a strong contribution of very the low-ion…
We analyze the emission line profiles detected in deep optical spectra of quasars to derive the mass of their super-massive black holes (SMBH) following the single-epoch virial method. Our sample consists in 6 radio-loud quasars and 4 radio-quiet quasars. We carefully fit a broad and narrow Gaussian component for each emission line in both the H$β$ (10 objects) and H$α$ regions (5 objects). A very good agreement of the derived SMBH masses, $M_{\rm SMBH}$, is found using the fitted broad H$β$ and H$α$ emission lines. We compare our $M_{\rm SMBH}$ results with those found by previous studies. We…
In the manuscript, the blue quasar SDSS J105816.19+544310.2 (=SDSS J1058+5443) at redshift 0.479 is reported as so-far the best candidate of true type-2 quasar with disappearance of central BLRs. There are so-far no definite conclusions on the very existence of true type-2 AGN, mainly due to detected optical broad emission lines in high quality spectra of some previously classified candidates of true type-2 AGN. Here, not similar as previous reported candidates for true type-2 AGN among narrow emission-line galaxies with weak AGN activities but strong stellar lights, the definite blue quasar S…
Quasar lines of sight intersect intervening galaxy discs or circum-galactic environments at random impact parameters and potential well depths. Absorption line velocity widths ($Δv_{90}$) are known to scale with host galaxy stellar masses, and inversely with the projected separation from the quasar line of sight. Its dependence on stellar mass can be eliminated by normalising with the emission-line widths of the host galaxies, $σ_{em}$, so that absorbers with a range of $Δv_{90}$ values can be compared directly. Using a sample of DLA systems at 0.2 < z < 3.2 with spectroscopically confirmed ho…
