A characteristic optical variability time scale in astrophysical accretion disks
Variability time scales in active galaxies
Active galactic nuclei contain a supermassive black hole (SMBH) surrounded by an accretion disk. As disk material falls toward the SMBH, it heats up enough to emit optical light. Burke et al. investigated how such optical emission varies over time in a sample of 67 active galaxies (see the Perspective by Lira and Arevalo). They observed a characteristic variability in timing that scaled with the SMBH mass. The results elucidate the physical processes within accretion disks and provide a method to estimate SMBH mass from optical variability observations. —KTS
Abstract
Accretion disks around supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei produce continuum radiation at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths. Physical processes in the accretion flow lead to stochastic variability of this emission on a wide range of time scales. We measured the optical continuum variability observed in 67 active galactic nuclei and the characteristic time scale at which the variability power spectrum flattens. We found a correlation between this time scale and the black hole mass extending over the entire mass range of supermassive black holes. This time scale is consistent with the expected thermal time scale at the ultraviolet-emitting radius in standard accretion disk theory. Accreting white dwarfs lie close to this correlation, suggesting a common process for all accretion disks.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Supplementary Text
Figs. S1 to S7
Table S1
Data S1
Resources
References and Notes
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Science
Volume 373 | Issue 6556
13 August 2021
13 August 2021
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
Submission history
Received: 10 February 2021
Accepted: 11 June 2021
Published in print: 13 August 2021
Acknowledgments
Funding: C.J.B. acknowledges support from an Illinois Graduate Survey Science Fellowship. Y.S. was supported by NSF grant AST-2009947. C.F.G. was supported by NSF grants AST-1716327 and OISE-1743747. K.H. was supported by UK STFC grant ST/R000824/1. I.M.M. was supported by UK STFC grant ST/R000638/1. C.W.M. was supported by NSF grant AST-2007680. Author contributions: C.J.B. led the data compilation and analysis. Y.S. designed the project and led the manuscript writing. O.B., C.F.G., and Y.-F.J. led the theoretical interpretation. X.L. and Q.Y. contributed to data compilation. I.M.M. and S.S. led the x-ray variability and white dwarf discussion. C.W.M. led the microlensing discussion. K.H. led the disk reverberation mapping discussion. All authors contributed to the scientific interpretation and manuscript writing. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: Optical light curves of the AGN sample were taken from the publicly available sources listed in table S1 and data S1; our compilation is archived on Zenodo (34). White dwarf optical variability time scale measurements were taken from (26). x-ray variability time scale measurements were from (26, 29). Our derived optical τdamping measurements are provided in table S1 (for the final sample) and data S1 (for the initial sample). The full figure set for our initial AGN sample (an example is shown in fig. S5) is also available on Zenodo (34). The software used is publicly available from the cited references, and a Python notebook to fully reproduce our analysis is available at https://github.com/burke86/taufit/tree/master/paper.
Authors
Funding Information
National Science Foundation: AST-1716327
National Science Foundation: OISE-1743747
National Science Foundation: AST-2007680
Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/R000824/1
Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/R000638/1
National Science Foundation: AST-2009947
National Science Foundation: AST-1716327
National Science Foundation: OISE-1743747
National Science Foundation: AST-2007680
UK Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/R000824/1
UK Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/R000638/1
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