The Accuracy of Supermassive Black Hole Masses Determined by the Single-Epoch-Spectrum (Dibai) Method

TL;DR

This study shows that the Dibai single-epoch spectrum method for estimating supermassive black hole masses yields results in excellent agreement with reverberation-mapping, supporting its use in AGN and galaxy evolution research.

Contribution

It demonstrates the accuracy of the Dibai method by comparing its estimates with reverberation-mapping results over a wide mass range.

Findings

Dibai estimates agree within 0.3 dex of reverberation-mapping.

Dibai estimates are on average 0.14 dex lower.

Results support the use of single-epoch spectra for black hole mass estimation.

Abstract

The first set of supermassive black hole mass estimates, published from 1980 to 1984 by E. A. Dibai, are shown to be in excellent agreement with recent reverberation-mapping estimates. Comparison of the masses of 17 AGNs covering a mass range from about 10^6 to 10^9 solar masses shows that the Dibai mass estimates agree with reverberation-mapping mass estimates to significantly better than 0.3 dex and were, on average, only 0.14 dex (~ 40%) systematically lower than masses obtained from reverberation mapping. This surprising agreement with the results of over a quarter of a century ago has important implication for the structure and kinematics of AGNs and implies that AGNs are very similar. Our results give strong support to the use of the single-epoch-spectrum (Dibai) method for investigating the co-evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.