Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Participants
- Preface
- Black holes, entropy, and information
- Gravitational waves from black-hole mergers
- Out-of-this-world physics: Black holes at future colliders
- Black holes in globular clusters
- Evolution of massive black holes
- Supermassive black holes in deep multiwavelength surveys
- Black-hole masses from reverberation mapping
- Black-hole masses from gas dynamics
- Evolution of supermassive black holes
- Black-hole masses of distant quasars
- The accretion history of supermassive black holes
- Strong field gravity and spin of black holes from broad iron lines
- Birth of massive black-hole binaries
- Dynamics around supermassive black holes
- Black-hole formation and growth: Simulations in general relativity
- Estimating the spins of stellar-mass black holes
- Stellar relaxation processes near the Galactic massive black hole
- Tidal disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes
- Where to look for radiatively inefficient accrection flows in low-luminosity AGN
- Making black holes visible: Accretion, radiation, and jets
Black-hole masses of distant quasars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Participants
- Preface
- Black holes, entropy, and information
- Gravitational waves from black-hole mergers
- Out-of-this-world physics: Black holes at future colliders
- Black holes in globular clusters
- Evolution of massive black holes
- Supermassive black holes in deep multiwavelength surveys
- Black-hole masses from reverberation mapping
- Black-hole masses from gas dynamics
- Evolution of supermassive black holes
- Black-hole masses of distant quasars
- The accretion history of supermassive black holes
- Strong field gravity and spin of black holes from broad iron lines
- Birth of massive black-hole binaries
- Dynamics around supermassive black holes
- Black-hole formation and growth: Simulations in general relativity
- Estimating the spins of stellar-mass black holes
- Stellar relaxation processes near the Galactic massive black hole
- Tidal disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes
- Where to look for radiatively inefficient accrection flows in low-luminosity AGN
- Making black holes visible: Accretion, radiation, and jets
Summary
A brief overview of the methods commonly used to determine or estimate the black-hole mass in quiescent or active galaxies is presented and it is argued that the use of mass-scaling relations is both a reliable and the preferred method to apply to large samples of distant quasars. The method uses spectroscopic measurements of a broad emission-line width and continuum luminosity and currently has a statistical 1σ uncertainty in the absolute mass values of about a factor of 4. Potentially, this accuracy can be improved in the future. When applied to large samples of distant quasars it is evident that the black-hole masses are very large, of order 1 to 10 billion M⊙, even at the highest redshifts of 4 to 6. The black holes must build up their mass very fast in the early universe. Yet they do not grow much larger than that: a maximum mass of ~1010M⊙ is also observed. Preliminary mass functions of active black holes are presented for several quasar samples, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Finally, common concerns related to the application of the mass-scaling relations, especially for high redshift quasars, are briefly discussed.
Introduction: Mass-estimation methods for active galaxies and quasars
The Hubble Space Telescope has played a key role in our ability to detect supermassive black holes in the centers of nearby galaxies and to determine their mass through its high angular resolution.
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- Black Holes , pp. 150 - 172Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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