Spectroastrometry and Reverberation Mapping: the Mass and Geometric Distance of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Quasar 3C 273

TL;DR

This study combines spectroastrometry and reverberation mapping to accurately measure the supermassive black hole's mass and distance in quasar 3C 273, demonstrating a novel integrated dynamical modeling approach.

Contribution

It introduces a combined spectroastrometry and reverberation mapping method to simultaneously determine SMBH mass and geometric distance in AGNs.

Findings

SMBH mass of approximately 1.2 billion solar masses

Angular-size distance of about 630 Mpc

BLR inclination of around 5 degrees

Abstract

The quasar 3C 273 has been observed with infrared spectroastrometry (SA) on broad Pa$\alpha$ line and optical reverberation mapping (RM) on broad H$\beta$ line. SA delivers information about the angular size and structure of the Pa$\alpha$ broad-line region (BLR), while RM delivers information about the physical size and structure of the H$\beta$ BLR. Based on the fact that the two BLRs share the mass of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) and viewing inclination, a combination of SA and velocity-resolved RM (SARM) thereby allows us to simultaneously determine the SMBH mass and geometric distance through dynamically modeling the two BLRs. We construct a suite of dynamical models with different geometric configurations and apply a Bayesian approach to obtain the parameter inferences. Overall the obtained masses and distances are insensitive to specific BLR configurations but more or less depend on parameterizations of the vertical distributions. The most probable model, chosen in light of the Bayes factor, yields an angular-size distance of $\log\,(D_{\rm A}/{\rm Mpc}) = 2.83_{-0.28}^{+0.32}$ and SMBH mass of $\log\,(M_\bullet/M_\odot)=9.06_{-0.27}^{+0.21}$, which agrees with the relationships between SMBH masses and bulge properties. The BLRs have an inclination of $5_{-1}^{+1}$ degrees, consistent with that of the large-scale jet in 3C 273. Our approach reinforces the capability of SARM analysis to measure SMBH mass and distance of AGNs even though SA and RM observations are undertaken with different emission lines and/or in different periods.