The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Accretion-Disk Sizes from Continuum Lags

TL;DR

This study measures accretion-disk sizes in quasars using continuum lag data from the SDSS-RM project, finding results consistent with classical models and highlighting the importance of analysis methods and additional physical factors.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive accretion-disk size measurements from SDSS-RM continuum lags and compares different analysis techniques, revealing biases and the need to consider additional physical effects.

Findings

Disk sizes are consistent with the 3 analytic model.

More massive quasars have larger accretion disks.

No conclusive correlation between disk size and luminosity.

Abstract

We present accretion-disk structure measurements from continuum lags in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project. Lags are measured using the \texttt{JAVELIN} software from the first-year SDSS-RM $g$ and $i$ photometry, resulting in well-defined lags for 95 quasars, 33 of which have lag SNR $>$ 2$\sigma$. We also estimate lags using the \texttt{ICCF} software and find consistent results, though with larger uncertainties. Accretion-disk structure is fit using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach, parameterizing the measured continuum lags as a function of disk size normalization, wavelength, black hole mass, and luminosity. In contrast with previous observations, our best-fit disk sizes and color profiles are consistent (within 1.5~$\sigma$) with the \citet{SS73} analytic solution. We also find that more massive quasars have larger accretion disks, similarly consistent with the analytic accretion-disk model. The data are inconclusive on a correlation between disk size and continuum luminosity, with results that are consistent with both no correlation and with the \citet{SS73} expectation. The continuum lag fits have a large excess dispersion, indicating that our measured lag errors are underestimated and/or our best-fit model may be missing the effects of orientation, spin, and/or radiative efficiency. We demonstrate that fitting disk parameters using only the highest-SNR lag measurements biases best-fit disk sizes to be larger than the disk sizes recovered using a Bayesian approach on the full sample of well-defined lags.