Reverberation Mapping of High Luminosity AGN

Abstract

Reverberation mapping has became one of the major tools for studying the distribution and kinematics of the gas in the broad line region (BLR) of active galactic nuclei (AGNs; see review by Netzer and Peterson in these proceedings). During the past decade a few tens of Seyfert 1 spectroscopic monitoring campaigns were carried out and about a dozen of them produced high quality data amenable to reverberation mapping techniques, mainly cross-correlation. Those campaign determined the BLR size in Seyfert galaxies to be of order of light-days to light-weeks. On the other hand, few spectroscopic campaigns were carried out on quasars, the high luminosity end of the AGN phenomenon, and almost none of them produced high enough quality data (see, e.g., Zheng et al 1987, Jackson et al. 1992).

In collaboration with Paul S. Smith, Dan Maoz, Hagai Netzer, and Buell T. Jannuzi.