Abstract

We consider the effect of radiation pressure from ionizing photons on black hole (BH) mass estimates based on the application of the virial theorem to broad emission lines in AGN spectra. BH masses based only on the virial product V2R and neglecting the effect of radiation pressure can be severely underestimated especially in objects close to the Eddington limit. We provide an empirical calibration of the correction for radiation pressure and we show that it is consistent with a simple physical model in which BLR clouds are optically thick to ionizing radiation and have average column densities of NH ∼ 1023 cm-2. This value is remarkably similar to what is required in standard BLR photoionization models to explain observed spectra. With the inclusion of radiation pressure the discrepancy between virial BH masses based on single epoch spectra and on reverberationmapping data drops from0.4 to 0.2 dex rms. The use of single epoch observations as surrogates of reverberationmapping campaigns can thus provide more accurate BH masses than previously thought. Finally, we show thatNarrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies have apparently low BH masses because they are radiating close to their Eddington limit. After the radiation pressure correction, NLS1 galaxies have BH masses similar to other broad line AGNs and follow the same MBH-σe/Lsph relations as other active and normal galaxies. Radiation forces arising from ionizing photon momentum deposition constitute an important physical effect which must be taken into account when computing virial BH masses.

Publication Date

5-1-2008

Comments

This is the pre-print of an article published by the American Astronomical Society. The final, published version is available here: https://doi.org/10.1086/529360

© 2008 The American Astronomical Society

Also archived in: arXiv:0802.2021 v1 14 Feb 2008

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works in February 2014.

Document Type

Article

Department, Program, or Center

School of Physics and Astronomy (COS)

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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