A comparative study of optical/ultraviolet variability of narrow-line Seyfert 1 and broad-line Seyfert 1 active galactic nuclei

TL;DR

This study compares optical/UV variability in narrow-line and broad-line Seyfert 1 AGNs, revealing similar long-term variability patterns but potential differences in short-term behavior, suggesting different dominant mechanisms.

Contribution

Introduces a novel maximum-likelihood method to quantify AGN variability and provides a comparative analysis of NLS1 and BLS1 AGNs using SDSS data.

Findings

Most NLS1 AGNs show significant variability with smaller amplitudes than BLS1.

Long-term variability patterns are similar for both AGN types.

Potential differences in short-term variability suggest different underlying mechanisms.

Abstract

The ensemble optical/ultraviolet variability of narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) type active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is investigated, based on a sample selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe-82 region with multi-epoch photometric scanning data. As a comparison a control sample of broad-line Seyfert 1 (BLS1) type AGNs is also incorporated. To quantify properly the intrinsic variation amplitudes and their uncertainties, a novel method of parametric maximum-likelihood is introduced, that has, as we argued, certain virtues over previously used methods. The majority of NLS1-type AGNs exhibit significant variability on timescales from about ten days to a few years with, however, on average smaller amplitudes compared to BLS1-type AGNs. About 20 NLS1- type AGNs showing relatively large variations are presented, that may deserve future monitoring observations, for instance, reverberation mapping. The averaged structure functions of variability, constructed using the same maximumlikelihood method, show remarkable similarity in shape for the two types of AGNs on timescales longer than about 10 days, which can be approximated by a power-law or an exponential function. This, along with other similar properties, such as the wavelength-dependent variability, are indicative of a common dominant mechanism responsible for the long-term optical/UV variability of both NLS1- and BLS1-type AGNs. Towards the short timescales, however, there is tentative evidence that the structure function of NLS1-type AGNs continues declining, whereas that of BLS1-type AGNs flattens with some residual variability on timescales of days. If this can be confirmed, it may suggest that an alternative mechanism, such as X-ray reprocessing, starts to become dominating in BLS1-type AGNs, but not in NLS1-, on such timescales.