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S. Gezari (California Institute of Technology), J.P. Halpern (Columbia University), M. Eracleous (Pennsylvania State University), A.V. Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley)
We present over a decade of spectroscopic monitoring of broad H\alpha emission lines in a sample of broad-line radio galaxies that demonstrate extremely broad, double-peaked line profiles that are well modeled by emission from photoionized gas in a relativistic accretion disk around a central black hole. We use the slow, systematic variability of the shape of the broad H\alpha lines to extract information about the structure and dynamics of the broad-line gas. We successfully rule out many alternative "non-accretion disk" models for the source of the double-peaked line emission, and test the robustness of the accretion disk model, and models for dynamical processes in the accretion disk, by directly comparing the observed profile variability with model predictions.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: suvi@srl.caltech.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.