Modelling photometric reverberation data -- a disk-like broad-line
  region and a potentially larger black hole mass for 3C120
  We consider photometric reverberation mapping, where the nuclear continuum
variations are monitored via a broad-band filter and the echo of emission line
clouds of the broad line region (BLR) is measured with a suitable narrow-band
(NB) filter. We investigate how an incomplete emission-line coverage by the NB
filter influences the BLR size determination. This includes two basic cases: 1)
a symmetric cut of the blue and red part of the line wings, and 2) the filter
positioned asymmetrically to the line centre so that essentially a complete
half of the emission line is contained in the NB filter. Under the assumption
that the BLR size is dominated by circular Keplerian orbits, we find that
symmetric cutting of line wings may lead to overestimating the BLR size by less
than 5%. The case of asymmetric half-line coverage, similar as for our data of
the Seyfert 1 galaxy 3C120, yields the BLR size with a bias of less than 1%.
Our results suggest that any BLR size bias due to narrow-band line cut in
photometric reverberation mapping is small and in most cases negligible. We
used well sampled photometric reverberation mapping light curves with sharp
variation features in both the continuum and the Hbeta light curves to
determine the geometry type of the Hbeta BLR for 3C120. Modelling of the light
curve, under the assumption that the BLR is essentially virialised, argues
against a spherical geometry and favours a nearly face-on disk-like geometry
with inclination i = 10 +/- 4 deg and extension from 22 to 28 light days. The
low inclination may lead to a larger black hole mass than the derived when
using the average geometry scaling factor f=5.5. We discuss deviations of
Seyfert 1 galaxies from the M_BH - sigma relation.
