Measuring the most massive black holes in the Universe

Dr. Shai Kaspi
Tel-Aviv University & Technion, Israel

It is now widely believed that supermassive black holes with masses of million
to billion solar masses reside in the center of every galaxy.  Such
supermassive black holes are also responsible for the high luminosity and
activity in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The mass of these black holes is an
important parameter which has to be measured in order to characterize and
understand the black hole phenomenon.  In this talk I will review the method of
"reverberation mapping" to measure the most supermassive black holes in the
Universe. The talk will focus on the emerging relations between the broad-line
region size, the AGN luminosity, and the supermassive black hole mass, and
their broad implications. Also will be reviewed recent results of reverberation
mapping studies which are starting to cover the full AGN luminosity range as
well as future prospects of this field.