TY - JOUR

T1 - Black hole virial masses from single-epoch photometry

T2 - the miniJPAS test case

AU - Chaves-Montero, Jonás

AU - Bonoli, Silvia

AU - Trakhtenbrot, Benny

AU - Fernández-Centeno, Alejandro

AU - Queiroz, Carolina

AU - Díaz-García, Luis A.

AU - Delgado, Rosa María González

AU - Hernán-Caballero, Antonio

AU - Hernández-Monteagudo, Carlos

AU - Lópen-Sanjuan, Carlos

AU - Overzier, Roderik

AU - Sobral, David

AU - Abramo, L. Raul

AU - Alcaniz, Jailson

AU - Benitez, Narciso

AU - Carneiro, Saulo

AU - Cenarro, A. Javier

AU - Cristóbal-Hornillos, David

AU - Dupke, Renato A.

AU - Marín-Franch, Antonio

AU - Oliveira, Claudia Mendes de

AU - Moles, Mariano

AU - Jr, Laerte Sodré

AU - Taylor, Keith

AU - Varela, Jesús

AU - Ramió, Héctor Vázquez

AU - Civera, Tamara

N1 - (c) ESO2022

PY - 2022/4/30

Y1 - 2022/4/30

N2 - Precise measurements of black hole (BH) masses are essential to understanding the coevolution of these sources and their host galaxies. In this work, we develop a novel approach to compute BH virial masses using measurements of continuum luminosities and emission line widths from partially-overlapping, narrow-band observations of quasars; we refer to this technique as single-epoch photometry. This novel method relies on forward-modelling quasar observations to estimate the previous properties, which enables accurate measurements of emission line widths even for lines poorly resolved by narrow-band data. We assess the performance of this technique using quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) observed by the miniJPAS survey, a proof-of-concept project of the J-PAS collaboration covering $\simeq1\,\mathrm{deg}^2$ of the northern sky using the 56 J-PAS narrow-band filters. We find remarkable agreement between BH masses from single-epoch SDSS spectra and single-epoch miniJPAS photometry, with no systematic difference between these and a scatter ranging from 0.4 to 0.07 dex for masses from $\log(M_\mathrm{BH}/\mathrm{M}_\odot)\simeq8$ to 9.75, respectively. Reverberation mapping studies show that single-epoch masses approximately present 0.4 dex precision, letting us conclude that our novel technique delivers BH masses with only mildly worse precision than single-epoch spectroscopy. The J-PAS survey will soon start observing thousands of square degrees without any source preselection other than the photometric depth in the detection band, and thus single-epoch photometry has the potential to provide details on the physical properties of quasar populations not satisfying the preselection criteria of previous spectroscopic surveys.

AB - Precise measurements of black hole (BH) masses are essential to understanding the coevolution of these sources and their host galaxies. In this work, we develop a novel approach to compute BH virial masses using measurements of continuum luminosities and emission line widths from partially-overlapping, narrow-band observations of quasars; we refer to this technique as single-epoch photometry. This novel method relies on forward-modelling quasar observations to estimate the previous properties, which enables accurate measurements of emission line widths even for lines poorly resolved by narrow-band data. We assess the performance of this technique using quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) observed by the miniJPAS survey, a proof-of-concept project of the J-PAS collaboration covering $\simeq1\,\mathrm{deg}^2$ of the northern sky using the 56 J-PAS narrow-band filters. We find remarkable agreement between BH masses from single-epoch SDSS spectra and single-epoch miniJPAS photometry, with no systematic difference between these and a scatter ranging from 0.4 to 0.07 dex for masses from $\log(M_\mathrm{BH}/\mathrm{M}_\odot)\simeq8$ to 9.75, respectively. Reverberation mapping studies show that single-epoch masses approximately present 0.4 dex precision, letting us conclude that our novel technique delivers BH masses with only mildly worse precision than single-epoch spectroscopy. The J-PAS survey will soon start observing thousands of square degrees without any source preselection other than the photometric depth in the detection band, and thus single-epoch photometry has the potential to provide details on the physical properties of quasar populations not satisfying the preselection criteria of previous spectroscopic surveys.

KW - Galaxies: active

KW - Glaaxies:photometry

KW - Line: profiles

KW - Quasars: emission lines

U2 - 10.1051/0004-6361/202142567

DO - 10.1051/0004-6361/202142567

M3 - Journal article

VL - 660

JO - Astronomy and Astrophysics

JF - Astronomy and Astrophysics

SN - 1432-0746

M1 - A95

ER -