Supermassive black holes and spectral emission lines

Abstract

It is widely accepted that active galactic nuclei (AGN) are hosting a supermassive black hole in their center. The supermassive black hole is actively fueled by surrounding gas through an accretion disk, which produces a broad band continuum (from X-ray to radio emission). The hard photons from the accretion disk create the photoionized plasma around the central black hole, which emits a number of broad emission lines. Therefore, one of the signatures of the strong activity in galaxies is the emission of the broad spectral lines (line widths of several 1000 km/s), which are seen only in a fraction of AGN, so called Type 1 AGN. These broad emission lines often show very complex line profiles, usually strongly variable in time. Here we will describe the basic properties of the broad emission lines and how can we use them to derive the properties of the central supermassive black hole, i.e., the mass and spin, or see signatures of supermassive binary black holes.