The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Initial C iv Lag Results from Four Years of Data

We present reverberation-mapping (RM) lags and black hole mass measurements using the C ivλ1549 broad emission line from a sample of 348 quasars monitored as a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey RM Project. Our data span four years of spectroscopic and photometric monitoring for a total baseline o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The Astrophysical journal 2019-12, Vol.887 (1), p.38
Main Authors:	Grier, C. J., Shen, Yue, Horne, Keith, Brandt, W. N., Trump, J. R., Hall, P. B., Kinemuchi, K., Starkey, David, Schneider, D. P., Ho, Luis C., Homayouni, Y., Li, Jennifer I-Hsiu, McGreer, Ian D., Peterson, B. M., Bizyaev, Dmitry, Chen, Yuguang, Dawson, K. S., Eftekharzadeh, Sarah, Guo, Yucheng, Jia, Siyao, Jiang, Linhua, Kneib, Jean-Paul, Li, Feng, Li, Zefeng, Nie, Jundan, Oravetz, Audrey, Oravetz, Daniel, Pan, Kaike, Petitjean, Patrick, Ponder, Kara A., Rogerson, Jesse, Vivek, M., Zhang, Tianmeng, Zou, Hu
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Active galactic nuclei Astrophysics Digital mapping Emission lines Luminosity Photometry Pollution monitoring Quasars Reverberation Reverberation mapping Sciences of the Universe Sky surveys (astronomy) Supermassive black holes
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Summary:	We present reverberation-mapping (RM) lags and black hole mass measurements using the C ivλ1549 broad emission line from a sample of 348 quasars monitored as a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey RM Project. Our data span four years of spectroscopic and photometric monitoring for a total baseline of 1300 days, allowing us to measure lags up to ∼750 days in the observed frame (this corresponds to a rest-frame lag of ∼300 days in a quasar at z = 1.5 and ∼190 days at z = 3). We report significant time delays between the continuum and the C ivλ1549 emission line in 48 quasars, with an estimated false-positive detection rate of 10%. Our analysis of marginal lag measurements indicates that there are on the order of ∼100 additional lags that should be recoverable by adding more years of data from the program. We use our measurements to calculate black hole masses and fit an updated C iv radius-luminosity relationship. Our results significantly increase the sample of quasars with C iv RM results, with the quasars spanning two orders of magnitude in luminosity toward the high-luminosity end of the C iv radius-luminosity relation. In addition, these quasars are located at some of the highest redshifts (z 1.4-2.8) of quasars with black hole masses measured with RM. This work constitutes the first large sample of C iv RM measurements in more than a dozen quasars, demonstrating the utility of multiobject RM campaigns.
ISSN:	0004-637X 1538-4357