2019ApJ...880..126H -
Astrophys. J., 880, 126-126 (2019/August-1)
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: accretion disk sizes from continuum lags.
HOMAYOUNI Y., TRUMP J.R., GRIER C.J., SHEN Y., STARKEY D.A., BRANDT W.N., FONSECA ALVAREZ G., HALL P.B., HORNE K., KINEMUCHI K., LI J.I.-H., McGREER I.D., SUN M., HO L.C. and SCHNEIDER D.P.
Abstract (from CDS):
We present accretion disk structure measurements from continuum lags in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project. Lags are measured using the JAVELIN software from the first-year SDSS-RM g and i photometry, resulting in well-defined lags for 95 quasars, 33 of which have lag S/N > 2σ. We also estimate lags using the ICCF software and find consistent results, though with larger uncertainties. Accretion disk structure is fit using a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach, parameterizing the measured continuum lags as a function of disk size normalization, wavelength, black hole mass, and luminosity. In contrast with previous observations, our best-fit disk sizes and color profiles are consistent (within 1.5σ) with the Shakura & Sunyaev analytic solution. We also find that more massive quasars have larger accretion disks, similarly consistent with the analytic accretion disk model. The data are inconclusive on a correlation between disk size and continuum luminosity, with results that are consistent with both no correlation and the Shakura & Sunyaev expectation. The continuum lag fits have a large excess dispersion, indicating that our measured lag errors are underestimated and/or our best-fit model may be missing the effects of orientation, spin, and/or radiative efficiency. We demonstrate that fitting disk parameters using only the highest-S/N lag measurements biases best-fit disk sizes to be larger than the disk sizes recovered using a Bayesian approach on the full sample of well-defined lags.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Journal keyword(s):
accretion, accretion disks - galaxies: active - galaxies: nuclei - quasars: general
VizieR on-line data:
<Available at CDS (J/ApJ/880/126): table1.dat>
Simbad objects:
102
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