Examining AGN UV/Optical Variability beyond the Simple Damped Random Walk

被引:28
作者
Yu, Weixiang [1 ]
Richards, Gordon T. [1 ]
Vogeley, Michael S. [1 ]
Moreno, Jackeline [1 ]
Graham, Matthew J. [2 ]
机构
[1] Drexel Univ, Dept Phys, 32 S 32nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
[2] CALTECH, Dept Phys Math & Astron, Pasadena, CA 91125 USA
基金
美国国家航空航天局; 美国国家科学基金会; 美国安德鲁·梅隆基金会;
关键词
DIGITAL-SKY-SURVEY; ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI; BLACK-HOLE BINARIES; BROAD-LINE REGION; OPTICAL VARIABILITY; EDDINGTON RATIO; SPACE-TELESCOPE; QUASARS; ACCRETION; EMISSION;
D O I
10.3847/1538-4357/ac8351
中图分类号
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号
0704 ;
摘要
We present damped harmonic oscillator (DHO) light-curve modeling for a sample of 12,714 spectroscopically confirmed quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 region. DHO is a second-order continuous-time autoregressive moving-average process, which can be fully described using four independent parameters: a natural oscillation frequency (omega (0)), a damping ratio (xi), a characteristic perturbation timescale (tau (perturb)), and an amplitude for the perturbing white noise (sigma ( epsilon )). The asymptotic variability amplitude of a DHO process is quantified by sigma (DHO)-a function of omega (0), xi, tau (perturb), and sigma ( epsilon ). We find that both tau (perturb) and sigma ( epsilon ) follow different dependencies with rest-frame wavelength (lambda (RF)) on either side of 2500 angstrom, whereas sigma (DHO) follows a single power-law relation with lambda (RF). After correcting for wavelength dependence, sigma (DHO) exhibits anticorrelations with both the Eddington ratio and the black hole mass, while tau (perturb)-with a typical value of days in the rest frame-shows an anticorrelation with the bolometric luminosity. Modeling active galactic nuclei (AGN) variability as a DHO offers more insight into the workings of accretion disks close to the supermassive black holes at the center of AGN. The newly discovered short-term variability (characterized by tau (perturb) and sigma ( epsilon )) and its correlation with bolometric luminosity pave the way for new algorithms that will derive fundamental properties (e.g., Eddington ratio) of AGN using photometric data alone.
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页数:20
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