2024/12/09 by Y. Homayouni, Homayouni, Y., Yuanzhe Jiang +19
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Statistical and numerical algorithms
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.06885
openalex publication_date 2024/12/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Multi-year observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) project have significantly increased the number of quasars with reliable reverberation-mapping lag measurements. We statistically analyze target properties, light-curve characteristics, and survey design choices to identify factors crucial for successful and efficient RM surveys. Analyzing 172 high-confidence ("gold") lag measurements from SDSS-RM for the Hβ, MgII, and CIV emission lines, we find that the Durbin-Watson statistic (a statistical test for residual correlation) is the most significant predictor of light curves suitable for lag detection. Variability signal-to-noise ratio and emission-line placement on the detector also correlate with successful lag measurements. We further investigate the impact of observing cadence on survey design by analyzing the effect of reducing observations in the first year of SDSS-RM. Our results demonstrate that a modest reduction in observing cadence to ∼1.5 weeks between observations can retain approximately 90% of the lag measurements compared to twice-weekly observations in the initial year. Provided similar and uniform sampling in subsequent years, this adjustment has a minimal effect on the overall recovery of lags across all emission lines. These results provide valuable inputs for optimizing future RM surveys.