The Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2016: Velocity-resolved Hβ Lags in Luminous Seyfert Galaxies

The astrophysical journal 925(1), 52 (2022). doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac3d26
We carried out spectroscopic monitoring of 21 low-redshift Seyfert 1 galaxies using the Kast double spectrograph on the 3 m Shane telescope at Lick Observatory from 2016 April to 2017 May. Targeting active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with luminosities of λ L $_{λ}$(5100 Å) ≈ 10$^{44}$ erg s$^{−1}$ and predicted Hβ lags of ∼20–30 days or black hole masses of 10$^{7}$–10$^{8.5}$ M $_{⊙}$, our campaign probes luminosity-dependent trends in broad-line region (BLR) structure and dynamics as well as to improve calibrations for single-epoch estimates of quasar black hole masses. Here we present the first results from the campaign, including Hβ emission-line light curves, integrated Hβ lag times (8–30 days) measured against V-band continuum light curves, velocity-resolved reverberation lags, line widths of the broad Hβ components, and virial black hole mass estimates (10$^{7.1}$–10$^{8.1}$ M $_{⊙}$). Our results add significantly to the number of existing velocity-resolved lag measurements and reveal a diversity of BLR gas kinematics at moderately high AGN luminosities. AGN continuum luminosity appears not to be correlated with the type of kinematics that its BLR gas may exhibit. Follow-up direct modeling of this data set will elucidate the detailed kinematics and provide robust dynamical black hole masses for several objects in this sample.
Published by Univ., Chicago, Ill. [u.a.]