Black hole mass and accretion rate of Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

The determination of the central black hole mass is crucial to the understanding of AGN physics. In this paper we briefly review some methods that are currently used to estimate the black hole mass of AGNs. Particularly we demonstrate the importance of two correlations: one between the black hole mass and the stellar velocity dispersion and another one between the broad line region (BLR) size and the optical continuum luminosity. Besides applying these relations in deriving black hole masses of various types of AGNs, we also employed the fundamental plane of elliptical galaxies to estimate the central velocity dispersions of AGN host galaxies, and then the black hole masses of AGNs including BL Lac objects. In addition, we derived another empirical relation between the BLR size and H_beta emission line luminosity from AGNs with the BLR size measured by reverberation mapping studies, and argued that more accurate black hole masses of extremely radio-loud AGNs could be obtained with it than using the usual R-L_{5100Å} relation because of the jet contribution to the optical continuum. Finally we pointed out that black hole mass estimation is very much helpful to determine the accretion rate and understand the accretion process in AGNs.