The Astrophysical Journal (Jan 2025)
Iron-corrected Single-epoch Black Hole Masses of DESI Quasars at Low Redshift
- Zhiwei Pan,
- Linhua Jiang,
- Wei-Jian Guo,
- Shengxiu Sun,
- Małgorzata Siudek,
- Jessica Nicole Aguilar,
- Steven Ahlen,
- David Brooks,
- Todd Claybaugh,
- Axel de la Macorra,
- Peter Doel,
- Enrique Gaztañaga,
- Satya Gontcho A Gontcho,
- Stephanie Juneau,
- Theodore Kisner,
- Andrew Lambert,
- Martin Landriau,
- Laurent Le Guillou,
- Marc Manera,
- Paul Martini,
- Aaron Meisner,
- Ramon Miquel,
- John Moustakas,
- Adam Myers,
- Claire Poppett,
- Francisco Prada,
- Graziano Rossi,
- Eusebio Sanchez,
- Michael Schubnell,
- Hee-Jong Seo,
- David Sprayberry,
- Gregory Tarlé,
- Benjamin Alan Weaver,
- Hu Zou
Affiliations
- Zhiwei Pan
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China; Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China
- Linhua Jiang
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China; Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China
- Wei-Jian Guo
- ORCiD
- Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100012, People’s Republic of China
- Shengxiu Sun
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China; Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University , Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China
- Małgorzata Siudek
- ORCiD
- Institute of Space Sciences , ICE-CSIC, Campus UAB, Carrer de Can Magrans s/n, 08913 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
- Jessica Nicole Aguilar
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Steven Ahlen
- ORCiD
- Physics Department, Boston University , 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
- David Brooks
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London , Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK
- Todd Claybaugh
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Axel de la Macorra
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México , Cd. de México C.P. 04510, México
- Peter Doel
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London , Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK
- Enrique Gaztañaga
- ORCiD
- Institute of Space Sciences , ICE-CSIC, Campus UAB, Carrer de Can Magrans s/n, 08913 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain; Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) , 08034 Barcelona, Spain; Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth , Dennis Sciama Building, Portsmouth, PO1 3FX, UK
- Satya Gontcho A Gontcho
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Stephanie Juneau
- ORCiD
- NSF NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Theodore Kisner
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Andrew Lambert
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Martin Landriau
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Laurent Le Guillou
- ORCiD
- Sorbonne Université , CNRS/IN2P3, Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Energies (LPNHE), FR-75005 Paris, France
- Marc Manera
- ORCiD
- Departament de Física, Serra Húnter, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona , 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain; Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) , The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra Barcelona, Spain
- Paul Martini
- ORCiD
- Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, The Ohio State University , 191 West Woodruff Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University , 4055 McPherson Laboratory, 140 W 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; The Ohio State University , Columbus, 43210 OH, USA
- Aaron Meisner
- ORCiD
- NSF NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Ramon Miquel
- ORCiD
- Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) , The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra Barcelona, Spain; Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats , Passeig de Lluís Companys, 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain
- John Moustakas
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy , Siena College, 515 Loudon Road, Loudonville, NY 12211, USA
- Adam Myers
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Wyoming , 1000 E. University, Department 3905, Laramie, WY 82071, USA
- Claire Poppett
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California Berkeley , 7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; University of California Berkeley , 110 Sproul Hall #5800 Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Francisco Prada
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC) , Glorieta de la Astronomía, s/n, E-18008 Granada, Spain
- Graziano Rossi
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Sejong University , Seoul, 143-747, Republic of Korea
- Eusebio Sanchez
- ORCiD
- CIEMAT , Avenida Complutense 40, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
- Michael Schubnell
- Department of Physics, University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
- Hee-Jong Seo
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, Ohio University , Athens, OH 45701, USA
- David Sprayberry
- ORCiD
- NSF NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Gregory Tarlé
- ORCiD
- University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
- Benjamin Alan Weaver
- NSF NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Hu Zou
- ORCiD
- National Astronomical Observatories , Chinese Academy of Sciences, A20 Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100012, People’s Republic of China
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/add7dd
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 987,
no. 1
p. 48
Abstract
We present a study on the possible overestimation of single-epoch supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses in previous works, based on more than 55,000 type 1 quasars at 0.25 < z < 0.8 from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We confirm that iron emission strength serves as a good tracer of the Eddington ratio, and estimate SMBH masses using an iron-corrected R – L relation for H β , where R is the broad-line region size and L is the continuum luminosity. Compared with our measurements, previous canonical measurements without the iron correction are overestimated by a factor of 1.5 on average. The overestimation can be up to a factor of 5 for super-Eddington quasars. The fraction of super-Eddington quasars in our sample is about 5%, significantly higher than 0.4% derived from the canonical measurements. Using a sample featuring both H β and Mg ii emission lines, we calibrate Mg ii -based SMBH masses using iron-corrected, H β -based SMBH masses and establish an iron-corrected R – L relation for Mg ii . The revised relation features a flatter luminosity dependence with a slope of 0.36 and incorporates an additional term of −0.21 R _Fe , where R _Fe denotes the relative iron strength. We use this formula to build a catalog of about 0.5 million DESI quasars at 0.6 < z < 1.6. If these iron-corrected R – L relations for H β and Mg ii are valid at high redshift, current mass measurements of luminous quasars at z ≥ 6 would have been overestimated by a factor of 2.3 on average, alleviating the tension between SMBH mass and growth history in the early universe.
Keywords
