Reverberation Mapping and the Masses of Black Holes in Active Galaxies

April 19, 2012

When: April 19, 2012 4:00PM

UC Irvine

Understanding the cosmological evolution and growth history of the population of supermassive black holes is a major theme in extragalactic astronomy. However, it is not possible to carry out direct measurements of black hole masses in distant quasars. Instead, estimates of black hole masses in quasars generally rely on scaling relationships that are calibrated via reverberation mapping observations of low-redshift active galaxies. I will present an overview of the method of reverberation mapping and discuss the prospects for improving the methods used to determine black hole masses in active galaxies, focusing on recent results from the Lick AGN Monitoring Project.

Aaron Barth

Aaron Barth is an observational astronomer, and his research is focused on the structure and dynamics of galaxies, the detection of supermassive black holes in galaxy centers, and the properties of active galactic nuclei and quasars. Aaron is the current PI of the Lick AGN Monitoring Project (LAMP), a reverberation mapping campaign at Lick, Faulkes and many additional follow-up telescopes. Reverberation mapping measures the time delay between continuum variations and broad emission line width changes in active galactic nuclei. This is used to investigate the kinematics and geometry of the gas clouds near the black hole, and thus infer information about the black hole itself. Reverberation mapping will be an excellent use of the network, and will incorporate FLOYDS in particular.

Seminar