Contribution of a disc component to single-peaked broad lines of active galactic nuclei

Bon, E.; Popović, L. Č.; Gavrilović, N.; Mura, G. La; Mediavilla, E.
Bibliographical reference

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 400, Issue 2, pp. 924-936.

Advertised on:
12
2009
Number of authors
5
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
55
Refereed citations
50
Description
We study the disc emission component hidden in the single-peaked broad emission lines (BELs) of active galactic nuclei. We compare the observed broad lines from a sample of 90 Seyfert 1 spectra taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with simulated line profiles. We consider a two-component broad line region model where an accretion disc and a surrounding non-disc region with isotropic cloud velocities generate the simulated BEL profiles. The analysis is mainly based on the measurements of the full widths (at 10 per cent, 20 per cent and 30 per cent of the maximum intensity) and on the asymmetries of the line profiles. Comparing these parameters for the simulated and observed Hα broad lines, we found that the hidden disc emission may be present in BELs even if the characteristic of two-peaked-line profiles is absent. For the available sample of objects (Seyfert 1 galaxies with single-peaked BELs), our study indicates that, in the case of the hidden disc emission in single-peaked broad-line profiles, the disc inclination tends to be small (mostly i < 25°) and that the contribution of the disc emission to the total flux should be smaller than the contribution of the surrounding region.
Related projects
Project Image
Relativistic and Theoretical Astrophysics
Introduction Gravitational lenses are a powerful tool for Astrophysics and Cosmology. The goals of this project are: i) to obtain a robust determination of the Hubble constant from the time delay measured between the images of a lensed quasar; ii) to study the individual and statistical properties of dark matter condensations in lens galaxies from
Evencio
Mediavilla Gradolph