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Caption: Figure 4.
Schematic of the innermost regions around a quasar’s central SMBH: the X-ray corona, accretion disk, and BLR. SDSS-V explores the physics of supermassive BH accretion and dynamics with three parallel approaches: RM, eROSITA follow-up, and multiepoch spectroscopy (represented by the top three panels). Top left: a simulation of the anticipated RM yield of time delays (here in just one of four BHM/RM fields) between UV/optical continua from the accretion disk and emission-line flux from the BLR, which yields the BH mass. Top middle: an early and representative eROSITA X-ray all-sky image (J. Sanders, H. Brunner, and the eSASS team (MPE); E. Churazov, M. Gilfanov (on behalf of IKI)), depicting high-energy data that—combined with SDSS-V spectra—allow BHM to conduct a census of the X-ray/optical properties for >105 quasars. Top right: an example of multiepoch spectra (G. Zeltyn et al. 2022) that reveals a marked change in observed continuum and emission-line spectral character in a BHM/SDSS-V “changing-look” quasar, even extending down to months-long timescales; similar spectral changes are seen already among more than 100 BHM-studied quasars (G. Zeltyn et al. 2024) and are probes of accretion state and obscuration events.
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