We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Planets to Cosmology Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2009
Reverberation mapping is a proven technique that is used to measure the size of the broad emission-line region and central black hole mass in active galactic nuclei. More ambitious reverberation mapping programs that are well within the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope could allow us to determine the nature and flow of line-emitting gas in active nuclei and to assess accurately the systematic uncertainties in reverberation-based black hole mass measurements.
Introduction: The inner structure of AGNs
There is now general consensus that the long-standing paradigm for active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is basically correct, i.e., that AGNs are fundamentally powered by gravitational accretion onto supermassive collapsed objects. Details of the inner structure of AGNs, however, remain sketchy, although both emission lines and absorption lines reveal the presence of large-scale gas flows on scales of hundreds to thousands of gravitational radii. The accretion disk produces a time-variable high-energy continuum that ionizes and heats this nuclear gas, and the broad emission-line fluxes respond to the changes in the illuminating flux from the continuum source. The geometry and kinematics of the broad-line region (BLR), and fundamentally, its role in the accretion process, are not understood. Immediate prospects for understanding this key element of AGN structure do not seem especially promising with the realization that the angular size of the nuclear regions projects to only microarcsecond scales even in the case of the nearest AGNs.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
