| Abstract: | The environs of supermassive black are spatially unresolved by current instruments and other means, such as reverberation mapping (RM), are required for their study. With the advance in observational capabilities RM is transforming from a qualitative tool to a quantitative one, with implications for supermassive black hole demography, accretion disk physics, quasar structure, and perhaps even cosmology. This talk will review the recent developments in the field focusing on new survey designs and data analysis techniques for high-fidelity RM. Tentative physical conclusions and emerging puzzles of recent RM investigations will be discussed. A new design for a RM survey will be outlined, and the steps taken to materialized it at the Wise Observatory will be presented. |
