A novel black hole mass scaling relation based on coronal gas, and its dependence with the accretion disc
M. Prieto, A. Rodríguez-Ardila, Swayamtrupta Panda, Murilo Marinello
Abstract
ABSTRACT Using bona-fide black hole (BH) mass estimates from reverberation mapping and the line ratio [Si vi] 1.963$\rm{\mu m}$/Brγbroad as tracer of the AGN ionizing continuum, a novel BH-mass scaling relation of the form log(MBH) = (6.40 ± 0.17) − (1.99 ± 0.37) × log ([Si vi]/Brγbroad), dispersion 0.47 dex, over the BH mass interval, 106–108 M⊙ is found. Following on the geometrically thin accretion disc approximation and after surveying a basic parameter space for coronal lines production, we believe one of main drivers of the relation is the effective temperature of the disc, which is effectively sampled by the [Si vi] 1.963$\rm{\mu m}$ coronal line for the range of BH masses considered. By means of cloudy photoionization models, the observed anticorrelation appears to be formally in line with the thin disc prediction Tdisc ∝ MBH−1/4.