A simulation-based quality-control framework for the broad-line region radius-luminosity relation

Abstract

The broad-line region (BLR) radius-luminosity (R-L) relation underpins single-epoch black hole mass estimates in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The published Hβsample is heterogeneous in observational quality, and it remains unclear how much of its scatter is intrinsic rather than caused by systematics in lag recovery. We quantify the contribution of unreliable lag recovery to the observed scatter of the HβR-L relation and provide tools for quality control. We compile a publicly available database of reverberation mapping measurements for ~1200 AGN from 32 campaigns spanning more than three decades, including lags, luminosities, line widths, black hole masses, and observational metadata. We develop a simulation-based consistency framework in which damped random walk light curves are sampled according to each campaign's baseline, cadence, and signal-to-noise ratio, and lags are recovered with the interpolated cross-correlation function (ICCF). Comparing expected, reported, and simulation-retrieved lags defines a four-tier flagging scheme. We refit the R-L relation with UltraNest for progressively cleaner samples and construct consensus samples across three reference slopes to reduce model dependence. Of 248 Hβsources, ~40% show discrepancies between reported and simulation-retrieved lags, while ~5% show direct inconsistencies between expected and retrieved lags. Excluding flagged sources and correcting for model bias reduces the inferred intrinsic scatter from σ= 0.26^{+0.02}_{-0.01} dex to 0.11\pm0.01 dex, with a corrected slope of α= 0.48\pm0.02. Our results indicate that a substantial fraction of the observed HβR-L scatter arises from observational limitations and lag-recovery biases rather than intrinsic AGN diversity. The database, simulation code, and RM-Scout campaign-planning tool are publicly available.