SNU AGN Monitoring Project (SAMP) using reverberation mapping of luminous AGNs

The links between super-massive black hole masses and their host galaxy properties are observed, indicating that black hole growth and host galaxy evolution are closely related. Reverberation mapping, which uses the time delay from the central black hole to broad line regions, is one of the best methods to estimate masses of black holes of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). However, only masses of about 50 black holes have been determined in reverberation mapping studies so far, and most of them are limited to optical luminosities below 10^45 erg/s due to the challenges of long-term time domain observations in both photometry and spectroscopy. In this project, we expand reverberation mapping samples to higher luminosities of > 10^44.5 erg/s at 0.1 < z < 0.35, that have expected time lags of 40 - 250 light days. Photometric (using LOAO 1-m and MDM 1.3-m) and spectroscopic (using MDM 2.4-m and Lick 3-m) monitoring campaigns are being conducted for a 3 year duration and 20 day cadence. Precedent photometric observations in 2015B show some targets with variability and follow-up spectroscopic observations are on-going. In this presentation, we introduce our project, present reverberation mapping simulation results, and preliminary results on photometry. These reverberation mapping masses of relatively high luminous AGNs will provide a strong constraint on black hole mass calibration, e.g., the single-epoch mass estimation.