The Relationship between Luminosity and Broad‐Line Region Size in Active Galactic Nuclei

We reinvestigate the relationship between the characteristic broad-line region size (R_blr) and the Balmer emission-line, X-ray, UV, and optical continuum luminosities. Our study makes use of the best available determinations of R_blr for a large number of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from Peterson et al. Using their determinations of R_blr for a large sample of AGNs and two different regression methods, we investigate the robustness of our correlation results as a function of data sub-sample and regression technique. Though small systematic differences were found depending on the method of analysis, our results are generally consistent. Assuming a power-law relation R_blr \\propto L^\\alpha, we find the mean…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 0205964
• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• OS
  Ohio State University
• CI
  California Institute of Technology
• JP
  Jet Propulsion Laboratory