The mass of the black hole in RE J1034+396

¹ Center for Theoretical Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Al. Lotników 32/46, 02-668 Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: bcz@camk.edu.pl
² Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Science, Bartycka 18, 00-716 Warsaw, Poland
³ Key Laboratory for Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19B Yuquan Road, 100049 Beijing, PR China
⁴ Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University, Orla 171, 30-244 Cracow, Poland
⁵ Faculty of Physics, University of Białystok, Ciołkowskiego 1L, 15-245 Białystok, Poland

Received: 11 January 2016
Accepted: 13 July 2016

Abstract

Context. The black hole mass measurement in active galaxies is a challenge, particularly in sources where the reverberation method cannot be applied.

Aims. We aim to determine the black hole mass in a very special object, RE J1034+396, one of the two active galactic nuclei (AGN) with quasi-periodic oscillations detected in X-rays, and a single bright AGN with optical band totally dominated by starlight.

Methods. We fit the stellar content using the code starlight, and the broad band disk contribution to optical/UV/X-ray emission is modeled with OPTXAGNF. Based on starlight, we develop our own code OPTGAL for simultaneous fitting of the stellar, Fe II, and BC content in the optical/UV/X-ray data. We also determine the black hole mass using several other independent methods.

Results. Various methods give contradictory results. Most measurements of the black hole mass are in the range 10⁶−10⁷ M_⊙, and the measurements based on dynamics give higher values than measurements based on Hβ and Mg II emission lines.