2010ApJ...716L..31A

The dependence of the long-term optical/UV variability on the spectral and fundamental physical parameters for radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is investigated. The multi-epoch-repeated photometric scanning data in the Stripe-82 region of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) are exploited for two comparative AGN samples (mostly quasars) selected therein: a broad-line Seyfert 1 (BLS1) type sample and a narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) type AGN sample within redshifts 0.3-0.8. Their spectral parameters are derived from the SDSS spectroscopic data. It is found that on rest-frame timescales of several years the NLS1-type AGNs show systematically smaller variability compared to the BLS1-type AGNs. In fact, the variability amplitude is found to correlate, though only moderately, with the eigenvector 1 parameters, i.e., the smaller the Hβ linewidth, the weaker the [O III] and the stronger the Fe II emission, the smaller the variability amplitude. Moreover, an interesting inverse correlation is found between the variability and the Eddington ratio, which is perhaps more fundamental. The previously known dependence of the variability on luminosity is not significant, and the dependence on black hole mass–as claimed in recent papers and also present in our data–fades out when controlling for the Eddington ratio in the correlation analysis, though these may be partly due to the limited ranges of luminosity and black hole mass of our samples. Our result strongly supports that an accretion disk is likely to play a major role in producing the optical/UV variability.