Broad line region echo from highly accreting intermediate-mass black hole candidate SDSS J144850.08+160803.1. The first probe of intra-night variability and reverberation mapping

TL;DR

This study confirms a highly accreting intermediate-mass black hole candidate and demonstrates the feasibility of photometric reverberation mapping for IMBHs, revealing short-timescale variability and BLR size estimates, advancing black hole mass measurement techniques.

Contribution

First photometric reverberation mapping campaign for a high-Eddington-rate IMBH, providing new insights into BLR size and variability at the faint end of the $R-L$ relation.

Findings

Confirmed AGN activity via X-ray detection.

Detected 55% intra-night Hα variability.

Estimated BLR radius of 1-8 days.

Abstract

Elusive intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) can be used as ``time-squeezing'' machines, enabling studies of AGN geometry via reverberation mapping on much shorter timescales than their supermassive siblings. Constraints on the BLR radius for IMBH candidates across a broad range of Eddington ratios help probe the unexplored faint end of the radius-luminosity ($R-L$) relation in AGNs. This opens up the opportunity to build a more robust $M_{BH}$ estimator. The present study is aimed at: (a) confirming a highly accreting IMBH candidate and (b) demonstrating the feasibility of the first photometric BLR RM campaign for IMBHs with high Eddington rates. SDSS J144850.08+160803.1 was identified as an IMBH candidate from a broad H$\alpha$-selected spectroscopic sample from SDSS. We carried out XMM-Newton X-ray observations to confirm its AGN status, along with narrowband H$\alpha$ and broadband SDSS g' monitoring over five months (March-July 2024) using a 60-cm telescope at the Caucasus Mountain Observatory. These time series allowed us both to probe the short-timescale variability and extract the time lag between the BLR and AD continuum. XMM-Newton detected J1448+16 as a bright X-ray point source with a photon index of $\Gamma = 2.32^{+0.15}_{-0.13}$ and X-ray luminosity of $L_{2-10\,\rm{keV}}=(3.3^{+0.5}_{-0.4})\times10^{41}$ erg s$^{-1}$, confirming its AGN activity. From the SDSS optical spectrum and X-ray properties, we estimated a BH mass of $\sim(0.9-2.4)~\times10^{5}M_{\odot}$ and Eddington rate of $\sim37-112\%$. We report high-amplitude $\sim55\%$ intra-night ($\sim1.7$~h) H$\alpha$ variability for this IMBH and extract a tentative BLR RM radius estimate of $\sim1-8~\mathrm{days}$. This work is a proof of concept for further high-Eddington-rate IMBH variability studies and BLR RM campaigns, which will be essential for an efficient calibration of the $R-L$ relation at the faint end.