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NGC 4472 is home to five ultraluminous X-ray sources hosted by globular clusters. These sources have been suggested as good black hole candidates in extragalactic globular clusters—a highly sought after population that may provide observational information regarding the progenitors of merging black hole binaries. In this body of work, we present X-ray and optical follow-up to one of these sources, CXOUJ1229410+075744 (GCU1). We find no evidence of [OIII] optical emission in GCU1 which indicates a lack of significant evidence for super-Eddington outflows, unlike what is seen in a handful of ULXs in extragalactic GCs. X-ray monitoring from 2019 to 2021 shows no detected X-ray emission above a few × 1038 erg/s. Comparisons of the multiwavelength properties to disc-dominated, near Eddington Galactic black hole low-mass X-ray binaries (GRS 1915+105 and XTEJ1817-330) suggests that GCU1 may show similar behaviour to GRS 1915+105 in terms of X-ray variability and similar relationships between LX and kT, with GCU1 showing maximum X-ray luminosities on order of higher magnitude.

We present new 5 GHz Very Large Array observations of a sample of eight active intermediate-mass black holes with masses 104.9 M⊙ < M < 106.1 M⊙ found in galaxies with stellar masses M* < 3 × 109 M⊙. We detected five of the eight sources at high significance. Of the detections, four were consistent with a point source, and one (SDSS J095418.15+471725.1, with black hole mass M < 105 M⊙) clearly shows extended emission that has a jet morphology. Combining our new radio data with the black hole masses and literature X-ray measurements, we put the sources on the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion. We find that the extent to which the sources agree with the Fundamental Plane depends on their star-forming/composite/active galactic nucleus (AGN) classification based on optical narrow emission-line ratios. The single star-forming source is inconsistent with the Fundamental Plane. The three composite sources are consistent, and three of the four AGN sources are inconsistent with the Fundamental Plane. We argue that this inconsistency is genuine and not a result of misattributing star formation to black hole activity. Instead, we identify the sources in our sample that have AGN-like optical emission-line ratios as not following the Fundamental Plane and thus cautionmore »the use of the Fundamental Plane to estimate masses without additional constraints, such as radio spectral index, radiative efficiency, or the Eddington fraction.

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In recent years, continuum-reverberation mapping involving high-cadence UV/optical monitoring campaigns of nearby active galactic nuclei has been used to infer the size of their accretion disks. One of the main results from these campaigns has been that in many cases the accretion disks appear too large, by a factor of 2–3, compared to standard models. Part of this may be due to diffuse continuum emission from the broad-line region (BLR), which is indicated by excess lags around the Balmer jump. Standard cross-correlation lag-analysis techniques are usually used to just recover the peak or centroid lag and cannot easily distinguish between reprocessing from the disk and BLR. However, frequency-resolved lag analysis, where the lag is determined at each Fourier frequency, has the potential to separate out reprocessing on different size scales. Here we present simulations to demonstrate the potential of this method and then apply a maximum-likelihood approach to determine frequency-resolved lags in NGC 5548. We find that the lags in NGC 5548 generally decrease smoothly with increasing frequency, and are not easily described by accretion-disk reprocessing alone. The standard cross-correlation lags are consistent with lags at frequencies lower than 0.1 day⁻¹, indicating they are dominated from reprocessing at sizemore »scales greater than ∼10 light days. A combination of a more distant reprocessor, consistent with the BLR, along with a standard-sized accretion disk is more consistent with the observed lags than a larger disk alone.

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Abstract Photoionization modeling of active galactic nuclei (AGN) predicts that diffuse continuum (DC) emission from the broad-line region makes a substantial contribution to the total continuum emission from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths. Evidence for this DC component is present in the strong Balmer jump feature in AGN spectra, and possibly from reverberation measurements that find longer lags than expected from disk emission alone. However, the Balmer jump region contains numerous blended emission features, making it difficult to isolate the DC emission strength. In contrast, the Paschen jump region near 8200 Å is relatively uncontaminated by other strong emission features. Here, we examine whether the Paschen jump can aid in constraining the DC contribution, using Hubble Space Telescope Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph spectra of six nearby Seyfert 1 nuclei. The spectra appear smooth across the Paschen edge, and we find no evidence of a Paschen spectral break or jump in total flux. We fit multicomponent spectral models over the range 6800–9700 Å and find that the spectra can still be compatible with a significant DC contribution if the DC Paschen jump is offset by an opposite spectral break resulting from blended high-order Paschen emission lines. The fits imply DC contributions rangingmore »from ∼10% to 50% at 8000 Å, but the fitting results are highly dependent on assumptions made about other model components. These degeneracies can potentially be alleviated by carrying out fits over a broader wavelength range, provided that models can accurately represent the disk continuum shape, Fe ii emission, high-order Balmer line emission, and other components.« less

Abstract We present the first results from the ongoing, intensive, multiwavelength monitoring program of the luminous Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 817. While this active galactic nucleus was, in part, selected for its historically unobscured nature, we discovered that the X-ray spectrum is highly absorbed, and there are new blueshifted, broad, and narrow UV absorption lines, which suggest that a dust-free, ionized obscurer located at the inner broad-line region partially covers the central source. Despite the obscuration, we measure UV and optical continuum reverberation lags consistent with a centrally illuminated Shakura–Sunyaev thin accretion disk, and measure reverberation lags associated with the optical broad-line region, as expected. However, in the first 55 days of the campaign, when the obscuration was becoming most extreme, we observe a de-coupling of the UV continuum and the UV broad emission-line variability. The correlation recovered in the next 42 days of the campaign, as Mrk 817 entered a less obscured state. The short C iv and Ly α lags suggest that the accretion disk extends beyond the UV broad-line region.