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| Paper: |
Evidence for Broad-Line Region Outflows and Their Impact on Black Hole Mass Measurements |
| Volume: |
460, AGN Winds in Charleston |
| Page: |
103 |
| Authors: |
Denney, K. D.; Assef, R. J.; Horne, K.; Peterson, B. M.; Vestergaard, M. |
| Abstract: |
Recent velocity-resolved reverberation mapping results have shown
indications of possible outflowing gas from the Hβ emitting
region of the broad-line region (BLR) in NGC 3227 (Denney et al. 2009, 2010). We show a preliminary velocity-delay map (VDM) from these
data that suggests the 2D gas motions could not be fully and
accurately interpreted from the 1D velocity-resolved reverberation
signal. From the VDM, an outflow component to the emission remains
possible but appears to be in addition to an underlying, disk-like BLR
structure consistent in size with the measured reverberation lag. The
black hole (BH) mass derived from this data is therefore secure from
any uncertainties possibly derived from gravitationally unbound gas
contributing to the emission. Additionally, we demonstrate that BLR
emission from the C IV λ1549 broad emission line can
reliably be used as a virial BH mass estimator. The presence of
self-absorption, blueshifts, and asymmetries observed in C IV,
and possibly connected with outflows, has raised questions in the
literature regarding the reliability of using this line for mass
estimates. However, our new results (Assef et al. 2011) show that
C IV-based masses are in agreement with those of Hβ when (1)
data quality is a priority and (2) a color-correction is applied to
the luminosity used to compute the mass estimates. |
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