A&A 560, A28 (2013) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201321424 & c ESO 2013 Astrophysics Black-hole mass estimates for a homogeneous sample of bright flat-spectrum radio quasars G. Castignani1, F. Haardt2;3, A. Lapi4;1, G. De Zotti5;1, A. Celotti1, and L. Danese1 1 SISSA, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy e-mail:
[email protected] 2 DiSAT, Università dell’Insubria, via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy 3 INFN, Sezione di Milano Bicocca, Piazza Della Scienza 3, 20126 Milano, Italy 4 Dipartimento di Fisica, Università “Tor Vergata”, via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Roma, Italy 5 INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy Received 6 March 2013 / Accepted 16 September 2013 ABSTRACT We have selected a complete sample of flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) from the WMAP 7 yr catalog within the SDSS area, all with measured redshift, and compared the black-hole mass estimates based on fitting a standard accretion disk model to the “blue bump” with those obtained from the commonly used single-epoch virial method. The sample comprises 79 objects with a flux density limit of 1 Jy at 23 GHz, 54 of which (68%) have a clearly detected “blue bump”. Thirty-four of those 54 have, in the literature, black-hole mass estimates obtained with the virial method. The mass estimates obtained from the two methods are well correlated. If the calibration factor of the virial relation is set to f = 4:5, well within the range of recent estimates, the mean logarithmic ratio of the two mass estimates is equal to zero with a dispersion close to the estimated uncertainty of the virial method.