Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

Oxford University Press (OUP), Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 1(406), p. L1-L5, 2010

DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-3933.2010.00866.x

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

The Quasar Mass-Luminosity Plane III: Smaller Errors on Virial Mass Estimates

Journal article published in 2010 by Charles L. Steinhardt, Martin Elvis
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We use 62185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR5 sample to explore the quasar mass-luminosity plane view of virial mass estimation. Previous work shows deviations of ~0.4 dex between virial and reverberation masses. The decline in quasar number density for the highest Eddington ratio quasars at each redshift provides an upper bound of between 0.13 and 0.29 dex for virial mass estimate statistical uncertainties. Across different redshift bins, the maximum possible MgII mass uncertainties average 0.15 dex, while H{β} uncertainties average 0.21 dex and CIV uncertainties average 0.27 dex. Any physical spread near the high-Eddington-ratio boundary will produce a more restrictive bound. A comparison of the sub-Eddington boundary slope using H{β} and MgII masses finds better agreement with uncorrected MgII masses than with recently proposed corrections. The best agreement for these bright objects is produced by a multiplicative correction by a factor of 1.19, smaller than the factor of 1.8 previously reported as producing the best agreement for the entire SDSS sample. ; Comment: 5 pages, MNRAS letters