scholarly journals Dynamical black hole masses of BL Lac objects from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

2011 ◽  
Vol 413 (2) ◽  
pp. 805-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Plotkin ◽  
S. Markoff ◽  
S. C. Trager ◽  
S. F. Anderson
2019 ◽  
Vol 622 ◽  
pp. A17 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Sabater ◽  
P. N. Best ◽  
M. J. Hardcastle ◽  
T. W. Shimwell ◽  
C. Tasse ◽  
...  

This paper presents a study of the local radio source population, by cross-comparing the data from the first data release (DR1) of the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7 main galaxy spectroscopic sample. The LoTSS DR1 provides deep data (median rms noise of 71 μJy at 150 MHz) over 424 square degrees of sky, which is sufficient to detect 10 615 (32 per cent) of the SDSS galaxies over this sky area. An improved method to separate active galactic nuclei (AGN) accurately from sources with radio emission powered by star formation (SF) is developed and applied, leading to a sample of 2121 local (z < 0.3) radio AGN. The local 150 MHz luminosity function is derived for radio AGN and SF galaxies separately, and the good agreement with previous studies at 1.4 GHz suggests that the separation method presented is robust. The prevalence of radio AGN activity is confirmed to show a strong dependence on both stellar and black hole masses, remarkably reaching a fraction of 100 per cent of the most massive galaxies (> 1011 M⊙) displaying radio-AGN activity with L150 MHz ≥ 1021 W Hz−1; thus, the most massive galaxies are always switched on at some level. The results allow the full Eddington-scaled accretion rate distribution (a proxy for the duty cycle) to be probed for massive galaxies, and this accretion rate is found to peak at Lmech/LEdd ≈ 10−5. More than 50 per cent of the energy is released during the ≤2 per cent of the time spent at the highest accretion rates, Lmech/LEdd > 10−2.5. Stellar mass is shown to be a more important driver of radio-AGN activity than black hole mass, suggesting a possible connection between the fuelling gas and the surrounding halo. This result is in line with models in which these radio AGN are essential for maintaining the quenched state of galaxies at the centres of hot gas haloes.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S267) ◽  
pp. 268-268
Author(s):  
Carol E. Thornton ◽  
Aaron J. Barth ◽  
Luis C. Ho ◽  
Jenny E. Greene

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has made it possible to identify the first samples of active galaxies with estimated black hole masses below ~ 106M⊙. We have obtained Spitzer IRS low-resolution spectra, covering 5–38 μm, of a sample of 41 Seyfert galaxies with low-mass black holes. Our sample includes SDSS-selected objects from the low-mass Seyfert 1 sample of Greene & Ho (2004) and the low-mass Seyfert 2 sample of Barth et al. (2008), as well as NGC 4395 and POX 52. The goals of this work are to examine the dust emission properties of these objects and investigate the relationship between type 1 and type 2 AGNs at low luminosities and low masses, to search for evidence of star formation, and to use emission-line diagnostics to constrain physical conditions within the narrow-line regions. Here we present preliminary results from this project.


Universe ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 145 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Garofalo ◽  
Damian J. Christian ◽  
Andrew M. Jones

By exploring more than sixty thousand quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5, Steinhardt & Elvis discovered a sub-Eddington boundary and a redshift-dependent drop-off at higher black hole mass, possible clues to the growth history of massive black holes. Our contribution to this special issue of Universe amounts to an application of a model for black hole accretion and jet formation to these observations. For illustrative purposes, we include ~100,000 data points from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 where the sub-Eddington boundary is also visible and propose a theoretical picture that explains these features. By appealing to thin disk theory and both the lower accretion efficiency and the time evolution of jetted quasars compared to non-jetted quasars in our “gap paradigm”, we explain two features of the sub-Eddington boundary. First, we show that a drop-off on the quasar mass-luminosity plane for larger black hole mass occurs at all redshifts. But the fraction of jetted quasars is directly related to the merger function in this paradigm, which means the jetted quasar fraction drops with decrease in redshift, which allows us to explain a second feature of the sub-Eddington boundary, namely a redshift dependence of the slope of the quasar mass–luminosity boundary at high black hole mass stemming from a change in radiative efficiency with time. We are able to reproduce the mass dependence of, as well as the oscillating behavior in, the slope of the sub-Eddington boundary as a function of time. The basic physical idea involves retrograde accretion occurring only for a subset of the more massive black holes, which implies that most spinning black holes in our model are prograde accretors. In short, this paper amounts to a qualitative overview of how a sub-Eddington boundary naturally emerges in the gap paradigm.


2001 ◽  
Vol 205 ◽  
pp. 140-141
Author(s):  
A.B. Pushkarev ◽  
D.C. Gabuzda ◽  
T.V. Cawthorne

BL Lacertae objects are active galactic nuclei with weak or undetectable line emission and strong variability in total intensity and linear polarization over a wide wavelength range from optical to radio. The radio emission and much of the optical emission is believed to be synchrotron radiation. Sources in the complete sample of BL Lac objects defined by Kühr and Schmidt (1990) have: 5 GHz fluxes of at least 1 Jy, radio spectral index α ≥ −0.5 (Sv ˜ v+α), rest frame equivalent width of the strongest emission lines less than 5 Å, and optical counterparts on the Sky Survey plates with brightness greater than 20m.


2019 ◽  
Vol 626 ◽  
pp. A8 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Missaglia ◽  
F. Massaro ◽  
A. Capetti ◽  
M. Paolillo ◽  
R. P. Kraft ◽  
...  

We present a catalog of 47 wide-angle tailed radio galaxies (WATs), the WATCAT, mainly built including a radio morphological classification; WATs were selected by combining observations from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory/Very Large Array Sky Survey (NVSS), the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters (FIRST), and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We included in the catalog only radio sources showing two-sided jets with two clear “warmspots” (i.e., jet knots as bright as 20% of the nucleus) lying on the opposite side of the radio core, and having classical extended emission resembling a plume beyond them. The catalog is limited to redshifts z ≤ 0.15, and lists only sources with radio emission extended beyond 30 kpc from the host galaxy. We found that host galaxies of WATCAT sources are all luminous (−20.5 ≳ Mr ≳ −23.7), red early-type galaxies with black hole masses in the range 108 ≲ MBH ≲ 109 M⊙. The spectroscopic classification indicates that they are all low-excitation galaxies (LEGs). Comparing WAT multifrequency properties with those of FR I and FR II radio galaxies at the same redshifts, we conclude that WATs show multifrequency properties remarkably similar to FR I radio galaxies, having radio power of typical FR IIs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 629 ◽  
pp. A50
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Oio ◽  
Luis R. Vega ◽  
Eduardo O. Schmidt ◽  
Diego Ferreiro

Aims. In order to study the slope and strength of the non-stellar continuum, we analysed a sample from nearby Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1). Also, we re-examined the location of NLS1 galaxies on the MBH − σ⋆ relation, using the stellar velocity dispersion and the [OIII]λ5007 emission line as a surrogate of the former. Methods. We studied spectra of a sample of 131 NLS1 galaxies taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7. We approached determining the non-stellar continuum by employing the spectral synthesis technique, which uses the code STARLIGHT, and by adopting a power-law base to model the non-stellar continuum. Composite spectra of NLS1 galaxies were also obtained based on the sample. In addition, we obtained the stellar velocity dispersion from the code and by measuring Calcium II Triplet absorption lines and [OIII] emission lines. From Gaussian decomposition of the Hβ profile we calculated the black hole mass. Results. We obtained a median slope of β = −1.6 with a median fraction of contribution of the non-stellar continuum to the total flux of 0.64. We determined black hole masses in the range of log(MBH/M⊙) = 5.6–7.5, which is in agreement with previous works. We found a correlation between the luminosity of the broad component of Hβ and black hole mass with the fraction of a power-law component. Finally, according to our results, NLS1 galaxies in our sample are located mostly underneath the MBH − σ⋆ relation, both considering the stellar velocity dispersion (σ⋆) and the core component of [OIII]λ5007.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S267) ◽  
pp. 263-263
Author(s):  
Brandon C. Kelly ◽  
Marianne Vestergaard ◽  
Xiaohui Fan ◽  
Lars Hernquist ◽  
Philip Hopkins ◽  
...  

We present the first estimate of the black hole mass function (BHMF) of broad-line quasars (BLQSOs) that self-consistently corrects for incompleteness and the statistical uncertainty in the mass estimates, based on a sample of 9886 quasars at 1 < z < 4.5 drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find evidence for “cosmic downsizing” of black holes in BLQSOs, where the peak in their number density shifts to higher redshift with increasing black hole mass. We estimate the lifetime of the BLQSO phase to be 70 ± 5 Myr for supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at z = 1 with a mass of MBH = 109M⊙, and we constrain the maximum mass of a black hole in a BLQSO to be ~ 1010M⊙. We find that most BLQSOs are not radiating at or near the Eddington limit. Our results are consistent with models for self-regulated black hole growth, where the BLQSO phase occurs at the end of a fueling event when black hole feedback unbinds the accreting gas.


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