Engineering topics

Penton, A. (ORCID:0000000299997757)

Publications and source records attributed to Penton, A. (ORCID:0000000299997757).

5 records

DOE OSTI2024

OzDES Reverberation Mapping Program: Stacking analysis with Hβ, Mg ii , and C iv

ABSTRACT Reverberation mapping is the leading technique used to measure direct black hole masses outside of the local Universe. Additionally, reverberation measurements calibrate secondary mass-scaling relations used to estimate single-epoch virial black hole masses. The Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) conducted one of the first multi-object reverberation mapping surveys, monitoring 735 AGN up to z ∼ 4, over 6 years. The limited temporal coverage of the OzDES data has hindered recovery of individual measurements for some classes of sources, particularly those with shorter reverberation lags or lags that fall within campaign season gaps. To alleviate this limitation, we perform a stacking analysis of the cross-correlation functions of sources with similar intrinsic properties to recover average composite reverberation lags. This analysis leads to the recovery of average lags in each redshift-luminosity bin across our sample. We present the average lags recovered for the Hβ, Mg ii, and C iv samples, as well as multiline measurements for redshift bins where two lines are accessible. The stacking analysis is consistent with the Radius–Luminosity relations for each line. Our results for the Hβ sample demonstrate that stacking has the potential to improve upon constraints on the R–L relation, which have been derived only from individual source measurements until now.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2023

OzDES Reverberation Mapping Programme: Mg ii lags and R − L relation

ABSTRACT The correlation between the broad line region radius and continuum luminosity (R–L relation) of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is critical for single-epoch mass estimates of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). At z ∼ 1–2, where AGN activity peaks, the R–L relation is constrained by the reverberation mapping (RM) lags of the Mg ii line. We present 25 Mg ii lags from the Australian Dark Energy Survey RM project based on 6 yr of monitoring. We define quantitative criteria to select good lag measurements and verify their reliability with simulations based on both the damped random walk stochastic model and the rescaled, resampled versions of the observed light curves of local, well-measured AGN. Our sample significantly increases the number of Mg ii lags and extends the R–L relation to higher redshifts and luminosities. The relative iron line strength $\mathcal {R}_{\rm Fe}$ has little impact on the R–L relation. The best-fitting Mg iiR–L relation has a slope α = 0.39 ± 0.08 with an intrinsic scatter $\sigma _{\rm rl} = 0.15^{+0.03}_{-0.02}$ . The slope is consistent with previous measurements and shallower than the H β R–L relation. The intrinsic scatter of the new R–L relation is substantially smaller than previous studies and comparable to the intrinsic scatter of the H β R–L relation. Our new R–L relation will enable more precise single-epoch mass estimates and SMBH demographic studies at cosmic noon.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2023

OzDES Reverberation Mapping Program: Hβ lags from the 6-yr survey

ABSTRACT Reverberation mapping measurements have been used to constrain the relationship between the size of the broad-line region and luminosity of active galactic nuclei (AGN). This R–L relation is used to estimate single-epoch virial black hole masses, and has been proposed to use to standardize AGN to determine cosmological distances. We present reverberation measurements made with Hβ from the 6-yr Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) Reverberation Mapping Program. We successfully recover reverberation lags for eight AGN at 0.12 < z < 0.71, probing higher redshifts than the bulk of Hβ measurements made to date. Our fit to the R–L relation has a slope of α = 0.41 ± 0.03 and an intrinsic scatter of σ = 0.23 ± 0.02 dex. The results from our multi-object spectroscopic survey are consistent with previous measurements made by dedicated source-by-source campaigns, and with the observed dependence on accretion rate. Future surveys, including LSST, TiDES, and SDSS-V, which will be revisiting some of our observed fields, will be able to build on the results of our first-generation multi-object reverberation mapping survey.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

OzDES reverberation mapping program: Lag recovery reliability for 6-yr C iv analysis

ABSTRACT We present the statistical methods that have been developed to analyse the OzDES reverberation mapping sample. To perform this statistical analysis we have created a suite of customizable simulations that mimic the characteristics of each source in the OzDES sample. These characteristics include: the variability in the photometric and spectroscopic light curves, the measurement uncertainties, and the observational cadence. By simulating the sources in the OzDES sample that contain the C iv emission line, we developed a set of criteria that rank the reliability of a recovered time-lag depending on the agreement between different recovery methods, the magnitude of the uncertainties, and the rate at which false positives were found in the simulations. These criteria were applied to simulated light curves and these results used to estimate the quality of the resulting Radius–Luminosity relation. We grade the results using three quality levels (gold, silver, and bronze). The input slope of the R–L relation was recovered within 1σ for each of the three quality samples, with the gold standard having the lowest dispersion with a recovered a R–L relation slope of 0.454 ± 0.016 with an input slope of 0.47. Future work will apply these methods to the entire OzDES sample of 771 AGN.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

OzDES Reverberation Mapping Programme: the first Mg ii lags from 5 yr of monitoring

ABSTRACT Reverberation mapping is a robust method to measure the masses of supermassive black holes outside of the local Universe. Measurements of the radius–luminosity (R−L) relation using the Mg ii emission line are critical for determining these masses near the peak of quasar activity at z ≈ 1−2, and for calibrating secondary mass estimators based on Mg ii that can be applied to large samples with only single-epoch spectroscopy. We present the first nine Mg ii lags from our 5-yr Australian Dark Energy Survey reverberation mapping programme, which substantially improves the number and quality of Mg ii lag measurements. As the Mg ii feature is somewhat blended with iron emission, we model and subtract both the continuum and iron contamination from the multiepoch spectra before analysing the Mg ii line. We also develop a new method of quantifying correlated spectroscopic calibration errors based on our numerous, contemporaneous observations of F-stars. The lag measurements for seven of our nine sources are consistent with both the H β and Mg ii R−L relations reported by previous studies. Our simulations verify the lag reliability of our nine measurements, and we estimate that the median false positive rate of the lag measurements is $4{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗