Application of Stochastic Modeling to Analysis of Photometric Reverberation Mapping Data

Understand

We use both simulated and real quasar light curves to explore modeling photometric reverberation-mapping (RM) data as a stochastic process.

• We do this using modifications to our previously developed RM method based on modeling quasar variability as a damped random walk.
• We consider the feasibility of one and two-band photometric RM and compare the results with those fr om spectroscopic RM.
• We find that our method for two-band photometric RM can be competitive with spectroscopic RM only for strong (large equivalent width) lines like Halpha and Hbeta, and that the one-band method is also feasible, but requires very high-precision photometry.