Standardizing reverberation-mapped H$α$ and H$β$ active galactic nuclei using radius--luminosity relations involving monochromatic and broad H$α$ luminosities

Abstract

We test the standardizability of a homogeneous sample of 41 lower-redshift ($0.00415\leq z \leq 0.474$) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) reverberation-mapped (RM) using the broad H$α$ and H$β$ emission lines. We find that these sources can be standardized using four radius$-$luminosity ($R-L$) relations incorporating H$α$ and H$β$ time delays and monochromatic and broad H$α$ luminosities. Although the $R-L$ relation parameters are well constrained and independent of the six cosmological models considered, the resulting cosmological constraints are weak. The measured $R-L$ relations exhibit slightly steeper slopes than predicted by a simple photoionization model and steeper than those from previous higher-redshift H$β$ analyses based on larger datasets. These differences likely reflect the absence of high-accreting sources in our smaller, lower-redshift sample, which primarily comprises lower-accreting AGNs. The inferred cosmological parameters are consistent within 2$σ$ (or better) with those from better-established cosmological probes. This contrasts with our earlier findings using a larger, heterogeneous sample of 118 H$β$ AGNs, which yielded cosmological constraints differing by $\gtrsim 2σ$ from better-established cosmological probes. Our analysis demonstrates that sample homogeneity$-$specifically, the use of a consistent time-lag determination method$-$is crucial for developing RM AGNs as a cosmological probe.