Reverberation Mapping Measurements of Black Hole Masses in Six Local Seyfert Galaxies

TL;DR

This study uses reverberation mapping to measure black hole masses in six local Seyfert galaxies, refining the BLR R-L relationship and providing velocity-resolved delay measurements to better understand AGN dynamics.

Contribution

It provides new and improved Hbeta reverberation lag measurements for low-luminosity AGNs, reducing scatter in the BLR R-L calibration and including velocity-resolved data.

Findings

Reliable black hole mass measurements for six Seyfert galaxies.

Refinement of the BLR R-L relationship at low luminosities.

Velocity-resolved Hbeta delay measurements available.

Abstract

We present the final results from a high sampling rate, multi-month, spectrophotometric reverberation mapping campaign undertaken to obtain either new or improved Hbeta reverberation lag measurements for several relatively low-luminosity AGNs. We have reliably measured thetime delay between variations in the continuum and Hbeta emission line in six local Seyfert 1 galaxies. These measurements are used to calculate the mass of the supermassive black hole at the center of each of these AGNs. We place our results in context to the most current calibration of the broad-line region (BLR) R-L relationship, where our results remove outliers and reduce the scatter at the low-luminosity end of this relationship. We also present velocity-resolved Hbeta time delay measurements for our complete sample, though the clearest velocity-resolved kinematic signatures have already been published.