@article{c1ed17c6a56a4e0eacf0e64c3ece116d,
title = "Dwarf AGNs from Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Optical Variability of Broad-line Dwarf AGNs from the Zwicky Transient Facility",
abstract = "We study the optical variability of a sample of candidate low-mass (dwarf and Seyfert) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) using Zwicky Transient Facility g-band light curves. Our sample is compiled from broad-line AGNs in dwarf galaxies reported in the literature with single-epoch virial black hole (BH) masses in the range MBH ∼ 104 − 108 M⊙. We measure the characteristic “damping” timescale of the optical variability τDRW, beyond which the power spectral density flattens, of a final sample of 79 candidate low-mass AGNs with high-quality light curves. Our results provide further confirmation of the MBH − τDRW relation from previous work within 1σ agreement, adding 78 new low-mass AGNs to the relation. The agreement suggests that the virial BH mass estimates for these AGNs are generally reasonable. We expect that the optical light curve of an accreting intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) to vary with a rest-frame damping timescale of ∼ tens of hours, which could enable detection and direct mass estimation of accreting IMBHs in wide-field time-domain imaging surveys with sufficient cadence like with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.",
keywords = "accretion, accretion discs, black hole physics, galaxies: active, galaxies: dwarf",
author = "Wang, {Z Franklin} and Burke, {Colin J} and Xin Liu and Yue Shen",
note = "Funding Information: Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-in and the 60-in Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-2034437 and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute for Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and IN2P3, France. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. Funding Information: We thank the anonymous referee for constructive comments which improved the clarity of the work. We thank Gautham Narayan for useful discussions. CJB acknowledges the Illinois Graduate Survey Science Fellowship for partial support. ZFW and XL acknowledge support from the University of Illinois Campus Research Board and NSF grant AST-2206499. YS acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-2009947. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under PHY-1748958. This research made use of Photutils, an Astropy package for detection and photometry of astronomical sources (Bradley et al. ). Funding Information: We thank the anonymous referee for constructive comments which improved the clarity of the work. We thank Gautham Narayan for useful discussions. CJB acknowledges the Illinois Graduate Survey Science Fellowship for partial support. ZFW and XL acknowledge support from the University of Illinois Campus Research Board and NSF grant AST-2206499. YS acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-2009947. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under PHY-1748958. This research made use of Photutils, an Astropy package for detection and photometry of astronomical sources (Bradley et al. 2022). Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-in and the 60-in Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-2034437 and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute for Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and IN2P3, France. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. This work makes use of SDSS-I/II and SDSS-III/IV data (http: //www.sdss.org/ and http://www.sdss3.org/). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Author(s)",
year = "2023",
month = may,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1093/mnras/stad532",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "521",
pages = "99--113",
journal = "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society",
issn = "0035-8711",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "1",
}