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Weighing super-massive black holes with narrow Fe Kα line

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Abstract

It has been suggested that the narrow cores of the Fe Kα emission lines in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are likely produced in the torus, the inner radius of which can be measured by observing the lag time between the V and K band flux variations. In this paper, we compare the virial products of the infrared time lags, and the narrow Fe Kα widths for 10 type 1 AGNs, with the black hole masses from other techniques. We found the narrow Fe Kα line width is in average 2.6 +0.9−0.4 times broader than expected, assuming an isotropic velocity distribution of the torus at the distance measured by the infrared lags. We propose the thick disk model of the torus may explain the observed larger line width. Another possibility is the contamination by emission from the broad line region or the outer accretion disk. Alternatively, the narrow iron line might originate from the inner most part of the obscuring torus within the sublimation radius, while the infrared emission may be from the outer cooler part. We note the correlations between the black hole masses based on this new technique and those based on other known techniques are statistically insignificant. We argue that this could be attributed to the small sample size and the very large uncertainties in the measurements of iron K line widths. The next generation of X-ray observatories could help verify the origin of the narrow iron Kα line and the reliability of this new technique.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Department of Astronomy, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Peng Jiang, JunXian Wang & XinWen Shu

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  1. Peng Jiang
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  2. JunXian Wang
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  3. XinWen Shu
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Correspondence to Peng Jiang.

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Recommended by WANG JunXian (Editorial Board Member)

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Jiang, P., Wang, J. & Shu, X. Weighing super-massive black holes with narrow Fe Kα line. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 54, 1354–1358 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-011-4352-7

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