Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter AGN

Wednesday, 20 September 2017, 14:00   (HS4)

Reverberation Mapping of the Most High Luminosity Quasars

S. Kaspi
Wise Observatory School of Physics & Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University

Over the past three decades reverberation mapping (RM) was applied to about 100 AGNs. Their broad line region (BLR) sizes were measured and yielded a mass measurement of the black holes in their center. However, very few attempts were carried out toward high-luminosity quasars, at luminosities higher than 10^46 erg/sec in the optical. Most of these attempts failed since RM of such quasars is difficult due to a number of reasons, mostly due to the long time needed to monitor these objects. During the past two decades we carried out two RM campaign on two samples of high-luminosity quasars, one at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in the USA and one at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. This contribution will present the results of these two RM campaigns in which we measured the BLR size of \sim 10 of the objects. The BLR size, mass, and luminosity relations will be presented over eight orders of magnitude in luminosity, pushing the luminosity limit to its highest point so far.