Participant List

Erin Bonning

The Accretion Disk Temperature -- Continuum Colors Relationship in Quasars

Accretion disks around supermassive black holes are widely believed to be the source of the optical/UV continuum in many classes of active galactic nuclei. We study the relationships between the optical/UV continuum colors and the characteristic disk temperature as inferred from the AGN bolometric luminosity and black hole mass.AGN disk models show that, as expected, hotter disks should have bluer continua. However, an examination of SDSS AGN spectra reveals a relation in the opposite sense. Reasons for this observed result will be discussed.


Talk On-Line