Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project.VI. Reverberating Disk Models for NGC 5548

Starkey, D.; Horne, Keith; Fausnaugh, M. M.; Peterson, B. M.; Bentz, M. C.; Kochanek, C. S.; Denney, K. D.; Edelson, R.; Goad, M. R.; De Rosa, G.; Anderson, M. D.; Arévalo, P.; Barth, A. J.; Bazhaw, C.; Borman, G. A.; Boroson, T. A.; Bottorff, M. C.; Brandt, W. N.; Breeveld, A. A.; Cackett, E. M.; Carini, M. T.; Croxall, K. V.; Crenshaw, D. M.; Dalla Bontà, E.; De Lorenzo-Cáceres, A.; Dietrich, M.; Efimova, N. V.; Ely, J.; Evans, P. A.; Filippenko, A. V.; Flatland, K.; Gehrels, N.; Geier, S.; Gelbord, J. M.; Gonzalez, L.; Gorjian, V.; Grier, C. J.; Grupe, D.; Hall, P. B.; Hicks, S.; Horenstein, D.; Hutchison, T.; Im, M.; Jensen, J. J.; Joner, M. D.; Jones, J.; Kaastra, J.; Kaspi, S.; Kelly, B. C.; Kennea, J. A.; Kim, S. C.; Kim, M.; Klimanov, S. A.; Korista, K. T.; Kriss, G. A.; Lee, J. C.; Leonard, D. C.; Lira, P.; MacInnis, F.; Manne-Nicholas, E. R.; Mathur, S.; McHardy, I. M.; Montouri, C.; Musso, R.; Nazarov, S. V.; Norris, R. P.; Nousek, J. A.; Okhmat, D. N.; Pancoast, A.; Parks, J. R.; Pei, L.; Pogge, R. W.; Pott, J.-U.; Rafter, S. E.; Rix, H.-W.; Saylor, D. A.; Schimoia, J. S.; Schnülle, K.; Sergeev, S. G.; Siegel, M. H.; Spencer, M.; Sung, H.-I.; Teems, K. G.; Turner, C. S.; Uttley, P.; Vestergaard, M.; Villforth, C.; Weiss, Y.; Woo, J.-H.; Yan, H.; Young, S.; Zheng, W.; Zu, Y.
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 835, Issue 1, article id. 65, 15 pp. (2017).

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1
2017
Number of authors
93
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
80
Refereed citations
76
Description
We conduct a multiwavelength continuum variability study of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 5548 to investigate the temperature structure of its accretion disk. The 19 overlapping continuum light curves (1158 \mathringA to 9157 \mathringA ) combine simultaneous Hubble Space Telescope, Swift, and ground-based observations over a 180 day period from 2014 January to July. Light-curve variability is interpreted as the reverberation response of the accretion disk to irradiation by a central time-varying point source. Our model yields the disk inclination i=36^\circ +/- 10^\circ , temperature {T}1=(44+/- 6)× {10}3 K at 1 light day from the black hole, and a temperature–radius slope (T\propto {r}-α ) of α =0.99+/- 0.03. We also infer the driving light curve and find that it correlates poorly with both the hard and soft X-ray light curves, suggesting that the X-rays alone may not drive the ultraviolet and optical variability over the observing period. We also decompose the light curves into bright, faint, and mean accretion-disk spectra. These spectra lie below that expected for a standard blackbody accretion disk accreting at L/{L}{Edd}=0.1.
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