Broad-line region in NGC 4151 monitored by two decades of reverberation mapping campaigns. I. Evolution of structure and kinematics

TL;DR

This study presents a comprehensive, two-decade long reverberation mapping analysis of NGC 4151, revealing the evolution of its broad-line region's structure and kinematics, and establishing correlations between emission line delays and luminosity.

Contribution

It provides the first long-term, consistent analysis of the BLR in NGC 4151, including velocity-resolved delays and insights into dynamical changes driven by radiation pressure.

Findings

Hβ time delays correlate with 5100 Å luminosity as τ ∝ L^{0.46±0.16}

Diverse BLR structures observed: outflows, inflows, and disks

Possible 1.86-year lag between BLR radius and luminosity

Abstract

We report the results of long-term reverberation mapping (RM) campaigns of the nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN) NGC 4151, spanning from 1994 to 2022, based on archived observations of the FAST Spectrograph Publicly Archived Programs and our new observations with the 2.3m telescope at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory. We reduce and calibrate all the spectra in a consistent way, and derive light curves of the broad H$\beta$ line and 5100\,{\AA} continuum. Continuum light curves are also constructed using public archival photometric data to increase sampling cadences. We subtract the host galaxy contamination using {\it HST} imaging to correct fluxes of the calibrated light curves. Utilizing the long-term archival photometric data, we complete the absolute flux-calibration of the AGN continuum. We find that the H$\beta$ time delays are correlated with the 5100\,{\AA} luminosities as $\tau_{\rm H\beta}\propto L_{5100}^{0.46\pm0.16}$. This is remarkably consistent with Bentz et al. (2013)'s global size-luminosity relationship of AGNs. Moreover, the data sets for five of the seasons allow us to obtain the velocity-resolved delays of the H$\beta$ line, showing diverse structures (outflows, inflows and disks). Combining our results with previous independent measurements, we find the measured dynamics of the H$\beta$ broad-line region (BLR) are possibly related to the long-term trend of the luminosity. There is also a possible additional $\sim$1.86 years time lag between the variation in BLR radius and luminosity. These results suggest that dynamical changes in the BLR may be driven by the effects of radiation pressure.