New black hole mass calibrations and the fundamental plane of the broad-line region size, luminosity, and velocity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new calibration of the broad-line region size-luminosity-velocity relation, incorporating Eddington ratio to define a fundamental plane, leading to improved black hole mass estimators and implications for cosmic black hole growth.

Contribution

It presents a three-parameter fundamental plane for AGN BLR properties and develops new single-epoch black hole mass estimators with reduced scatter.

Findings

The fundamental plane has an intrinsic scatter of 0.21 dex.

New mass estimators show ~0.1 dex scatter in lag predictions.

Previous mass estimates can be overestimated by up to 0.5 dex.

Abstract

We present a new calibration of the broad-line region (BLR) size-luminosity-velocity relation using a sample of 157 AGNs with reliable Hbeta time-delay (\lag) measurements from Wang & Woo 2024. By incorporating the Eddington ratio as a third parameter, we effectively correct the systematic offset of high-Eddington AGNs in the traditional BLR size-luminosity relation. The resulting three-parameter fit defines a fundamental plane in the 3-D space of the \lag, optical luminosity, and Hbeta velocity, with an intrinsic scatter of 0.21 dex. This tight correlation reflects the coupled effects of gas kinematics, photoionization, and BLR geometry. In turn, we develop a new method to infer \lag\ from the combination of optical luminosity and Hbeta velocity, and derive single-epoch black hole mass estimators by adopting either the full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) or line dispersion ($\sigma$) of the Hbeta line profile as the velocity indicator. The derived \lag shows a ~0.1 dex scatter, depending on the choice of calibrations. We show that the previous mass estimates based on the two-parameter size-luminosity relation with a 0.5 slope can be overestimated by up to 0.5 dex, demonstrating that the new mass estimator substantially changes the cosmic black hole mass density and the growth of black hole seeds in the early universe.