The Quasar Accretion Disk Size – Black Hole Mass Relation

We use the microlensing variability observed for nine gravitationally lensed quasars to show that the accretion disk size at 2500Å is related to the black hole mass by log(R2500/cm) = (15.6± 0.2) + (0.54± 0.28) log(MBH/10M⊙). This scaling is consistent with the expectation from thin disk theory (R ∝ M BH), but it implies that black holes radiate with relatively low efficiency, log(η) = −1.29 ± 0.44 + log(L/LE) where η = L/(Ṁc ). These sizes are also larger, by a factor of ∼ 3, than the size needed to produce the observed 0.8μm quasar flux by thermal radiation from a thin disk with the same T ∝ R temperature profile. More sophisticated disk models are clearly required, particularly as our continuing observations improve the precision of the measurements and yield estimates of the scaling with wavelength and accretion rate. Subject headings: accretion, accretion disks — dark matter — gravitational lensing — quasars: general