Black hole virial masses from single-epoch photometry: The miniJPAS test case

• Published in: Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 2022-04, Vol.660, p.A95
• Main Authors: Chaves-Montero, J., Bonoli, S., Trakhtenbrot, B., Fernández-Centeno, A., Queiroz, C., Díaz-García, L. A., González Delgado, R. M., Hernán-Caballero, A., Hernández-Monteagudo, C., Lópen-Sanjuan, C., Overzier, R., Sobral, D., Abramo, L. R., Alcaniz, J., Benitez, N., Carneiro, S., Cenarro, A. J., Cristóbal-Hornillos, D., Dupke, R. A., Ederoclite, A., Marín-Franch, A., Mendes de Oliveira, C., Moles, M., Sodré, L., Taylor, K., Varela, J., Vázquez Ramió, H., Civera, T.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0004-6361; 1432-0746
• DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202142567

Context. Precise measurements of black hole masses are essential to understanding the coevolution of these sources and their host galaxies. Aims. We develop a novel approach for computing black hole virial masses using measurements of continuum luminosities and emission line widths from partially overlapping, narrow-band observations of quasars; we refer to this technique as single-epoch photometry. Methods. This novel method relies on forward-modelling quasar observations for estimating emission line widths, which enables unbiased measurements even for lines coarsely resolved by narrow-band data. We assess the performance of this technique using quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) observed by the miniJPAS survey, a proof-of-concept project of the Javalambre Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) collaboration covering ≃1 deg 2 of the northern sky using the 56 J-PAS narrow-band filters. Results. We find remarkable agreement between black hole masses from single-epoch SDSS spectra and single-epoch miniJPAS photometry, with no systematic difference between these and a scatter ranging from 0.4 to 0.07 dex for masses from log( M BH )≃8 to 9.75, respectively. Reverberation mapping studies show that single-epoch masses present approximately 0.4 dex precision, letting us conclude that our novel technique delivers black hole masses with only mildly lower precision than single-epoch spectroscopy. Conclusions. The J-PAS survey will soon start observing thousands of square degrees without any source preselection other than the photometric depth in the detection band, and thus single-epoch photometry has the potential to provide details on the physical properties of quasar populations that do not satisfy the preselection criteria of previous spectroscopic surveys.