The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Accretion Disk Sizes from Continuum Lags
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Final Published Version
Author
Homayouni, Y.Trump, Jonathan R.

Grier, C. J.

Shen, Yue

Starkey, D. A.
Brandt, W. N.

Alvarez, G. Fonseca
Hall, P. B.
Horne, Keith
Kinemuchi, Karen

Li, Jennifer I-Hsiu
McGreer, Ian D.
Sun, Mouyuan

Ho, L. C.
Schneider, D. P.
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Steward ObservIssue Date
2019-08-01
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IOP PUBLISHING LTDCitation
Y. Homayouni et al 2019 ApJ 880 126Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNALRights
Copyright © 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
We present accretion disk structure measurements from continuum lags in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project. Lags are measured using the JAVELIN software from the first-year SDSS-RM g and i photometry, resulting in well-defined lags for 95 quasars, 33 of which have lag S/N > 2 sigma. We also estimate lags using the ICCF software and find consistent results, though with larger uncertainties. Accretion disk structure is fit using a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach, parameterizing the measured continuum lags as a function of disk size normalization, wavelength, black hole mass, and luminosity. In contrast with previous observations, our best-fit disk sizes and color profiles are consistent (within 1.5 sigma) with the Shakura & Sunyaev analytic solution. We also find that more massive quasars have larger accretion disks, similarly consistent with the analytic accretion disk model. The data are inconclusive on a correlation between disk size and continuum luminosity, with results that are consistent with both no correlation and the Shakura & Sunyaev expectation. The continuum lag fits have a large excess dispersion, indicating that our measured lag errors are underestimated and/or our best-fit model may be missing the effects of orientation, spin, and/or radiative efficiency. We demonstrate that fitting disk parameters using only the highest-S/N lag measurements biases best-fit disk sizes to be larger than the disk sizes recovered using a Bayesian approach on the full sample of well-defined lags.ISSN
0004-637XVersion
Final published versionSponsors
NASA [HST-GO-15260]; NSF [AST-1715579, AST-1517113]; Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; STFC [ST/R000824/1]; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [2017-05983]; National Key R&D Program of China [2016YFA0400702]; National Science Foundation of China [11473002, 11721303]; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; National Science Foundation; U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science; University of Arizona; Brazilian Participation Group; Brookhaven National Laboratory; Carnegie Mellon University; National Research Council of Canada; University of Florida; French Participation Group; German Participation Group; Harvard University; Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias; Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group; Johns Hopkins University; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics; Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics; New Mexico State University; New York University; Ohio State University; Pennsylvania State University; University of Portsmouth; Princeton University; Spanish Participation Group; University of Tokyo; University of Utah; Vanderbilt University; University of Virginia; University of Washington; Yale University; French TACs; CFHT Canadian; National Astronomical Observatories; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Special Fund for Astronomy from the Ministry of Finance in Chinaae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.3847/1538-4357/ab2638