Dust reverberation mapping in the era of big optical surveys and its cosmological application

Abstract

The time lag between optical and near-infrared (IR) flux variability can be taken as a means to determine the sublimation radius of the dusty "torus" around supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). I will show that data from large optical survey telescopes, e.g., the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), can be used to measure dust sublimation radii as well. The method makes use of the fact that the Wien tail of the hot dust emission reaches into the optical and can be reliably recovered with high-quality photometry. Simulations show that dust sublimation radii for a large sample of AGNs can be reliably established out to redshift z 0.1-0.2 with the LSST. Due to the ubiquitous presence of AGNs up to high redshifts, they have been studied as cosmological probes. Here, I discuss how optically determined dust time lags fit into the suggestion of using the dust sublimation radius as a "standard candle" and propose an extension of the dust time lags as "standard rulers" in combination with IR interferometry. © 2014. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.