[en] Owing to the advent of large area photometric surveys, the possibility to use broad band photometric data, instead of spectra, to measure the size of the broad line region of active galactic nuclei, has raised a large interest. We will describe a new method using time-delay lensed quasars where one (or several) images are affected by microlensing due to stars in the lensing galaxy. Because microlensing decreases (or increases) the flux of the continuum compared to the broad line region, it changes the contrast between these two emission components. We show that this effect can be used to effectively disentangle the intrinsic variability of those two regions, offering the opportunity to perform reverberation mapping based on single band photometric data. Based on simulated light curves, we show that measurement of the size of the broad line region can be achieved using this method, provided one spectrum has been obtained independently during the monitoring. This method is complementary to photometric reverberation mapping and could also be extended to multi-band data.
Disciplines :
Space science, astronomy & astrophysics
Author, co-author :
Sluse, Dominique ; Université de Liège > Département d'astrophys., géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Astroph. extragalactique et observations spatiales (AEOS)
Tewes, Malte; University of Bonn > Argelander Institut fuer Astronomie
Language :
English
Title :
Measuring the size of the broad line region in quasars with Microlensing-aided reverberation mapping
Publication date :
June 2015
Event name :
10th Serbian Conference on Spectral Line Shapes in Astrophysics