We report the discovery of giant ionization cones in the 140-kpc nebula around quasar MR 2251-178 based on deep [O III] 5007/H-beta and [N II] 6583/H-alpha flux ratio maps obtained with the Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter (MMTF) on the Baade-Magellan 6.5m telescope. These cones are aligned with the weak double-lobed radio source observed on smaller scale <30 kpc). They have an opening angle ~120deg +/- 10deg and subtend ~65-90% of 4pi steradians, where the large uncertainty takes into account possible projection effects. The material in the outer ionization cones is matter-bounded, indicating that all ionizing photons emitted through the cones escape from the system. The quasar ionizing flux is ~2-3 times fainter outside of these cones, despite the largely symmetric geometry of the nebula in [O III]. Overall, adding up the contributions from both inside and outside the cones, we find that ~65-95% of the quasar ionizing radiation makes its way out of the system. These results emphasize the need for line ratio maps to quantify the escape fraction of ionizing radiation from quasars and the importance of quasar radiative feedback on the intergalactic medium.
The larger-than-expected scatter in the opacity of the Ly$α$ forest suggests that the metagalactic ionizing background is strongly fluctuating at $z > 5.5$. Models for ionizing background fluctuations predict a strong positive bias on large scales, so the environments of massive $>10^{12}\,{\rm M}_\odot$ dark matter halos, e.g. $z\sim6$ quasar hosts, would be ideal laboratories to constrain the sources of ionizing photons. While the quasars themselves should overwhelm any plausible ionizing photon contribution from neighboring galaxies, proximate damped Ly$α$ absorbers (DLAs) have recently bee…
BLR Physical Conditions in Extreme Population A Quasars: a Method to Estimate Central Black Hole Mass at High Redshift
我们描述了一种方法,用于确定的物理条件在宽线区域的一个显着的子样本的Seyfert-1核和类星体。基于类星体紫外光谱中的中(Al III 1860,Si III 1892)和高(CIV 1549,Si IV 1397)电离线的几个诊断比率被用来约束发射气体的密度,电离和金属性。我们将该方法应用于两个极端的人口A类星体-原型NLSy 1 I Zw 1和高Z\NLSy 1-like对象,SDSS J120144.36+011611.6。我们发现了明确的物理条件:低电离(电离参数$< 10^{-2}$),高密度(10 $^{12} - 10^{13}$ cm^{-3})和显着的金属富集。电离参数和密度可以独立地推导出每个源的不确定性,总是小于$\pm 0.3$的对数。我们用乘积密度乘以电离参数来估计宽线区半径和维里黑洞质量。基于本文描述的“光电离”分析的黑洞质量估计可能比从半径-光度相关性导出的更准确。
We reanalyze the mid-infrared (5-40 $μ$m) Spitzer spectra of 86 low-redshift ($z < 0.5$) Palomar-Green quasars to investigate the nature of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission and its utility as a star formation rate (SFR) indicator for the host galaxies of luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We decompose the spectra with our recently developed template-fitting technique to measure PAH fluxes and upper limits, which we interpret using mock spectra that simulate the effects of AGN dilution. While luminous quasars can severely dilute and affect the detectability of emission lines,…
The inter-line comparison between high- and low-ionization emission lines has yielded a wealth of information on the quasar broad line region (BLR) structure and dynamics, including perhaps the earliest unambiguous evidence in favor of a disk + wind structure in radio-quiet quasars. We carried out an analysis of the CIV 1549 and Hbeta line profiles of 28 Hamburg-ESO high luminosity quasars and of 48 low-z, low luminosity sources in order to test whether the high-ionization line CIV 1549 width could be correlated with Hbeta and be used as a virial broadening estimator. We analyze intermediate- …
The Eddington ratio is a key parameter that governs the diversity of quasar properties. It can be scaled with a strong anti-correlation between optical Fe II and [O III] emission. In search of such indicators in the far-UV band, the HST far-UV spectra of 150 low-redshift quasars are analyzed in combination with their optical SDSS counterparts. The strength of Fe II+Fe III 1123 emission is significantly correlated with that of optical Fe II. A moderate correlation may also exist between Fe II 1071 and optical Fe II. The finding opens the possibility that far-UV Fe II emission may serve as a new…
We investigate the impact of quasars on the ionization of the surrounding intergalactic medium (IGM) with the radiative transfer code \texttt{CRASH4}, now accounting for X-rays and secondary electrons. After comparing with analytic solutions, we post-process a cosmic volume ($ \approx 1.5\times 10^4$ Mpc$^3 h^{-3}$) containing a ULAS J1120+0641-like quasar (QSO) hosted by a $5 \times 10^{11} {\rm M}_\odot h^{-1}$ dark matter (DM) halo. We find that: (i) the average HII region ($R\sim3.2$~pMpc in a lifetime $t_f = 10^7$~yrs) is mainly set by UV flux, in agreement with semi-analytic scaling rela…
Strong Variability of Overlapping Iron Broad Absorption Lines in Five Radio-selected Quasars
利用首次亮类星体巡天(FBQS)和斯隆数字巡天(SDSS)的存档数据以及我们自己获得的数据,研究了28个均匀射电选择的宽吸收线(BALs)在类星体静止坐标系中的变化,时间尺度为$\sim 1-10$年。令人惊讶的是,5个表现出强烈变化的类星体都属于重叠铁低电离BAL(OFeLoBAL)类星体的一个特殊子类,而其他4个非重叠铁低电离BAL(non-OFeLoBALs)类星体除了1个光学深度变化较弱的情况外,其余都是不变的。同时,我们还发现了该BAL类星体中高电离和低电离BALs的6种典型变化。光电离模型表明,OFeLoBALs形成在一个相对密集的($n_e>10^6$ cm $^{-3}$)流出的距离从subparsec到几十秒差距的连续源。它们与那些非OFeLoBALs不同,后者可能是由低密度气体产生的,位于数百到数千秒差距的距离。因此,OFeLoBAL和非OFeLoBAL,即,具有或不具有强BAL变化的FeLoBALs可能代表了Fe II吸收的双峰性,前者位于活动星系核环境中,而不是宿主星系。我们认为,高密度和小距离是OFeLoBALs产生的必要条件。正如文献中所建议的,强BAL变化可能是由于BAL区域的覆盖因子的变化引起的云过境视线,而不是电离变化。
We study the dramatic decrease in iron absorption strength in the iron low-ionization broad absorption line quasar SDSS J084133.15+200525.8. We report on the continued weakening of absorption in the prototype of this class of variable broad absorption line quasar, FBQS J140806.2+305448. We also report a third example of this class, SDSS J123103.70+392903.6; unlike the other two examples, it has undergone an increase in observed continuum brightness (at 3000~Å rest-frame) as well as a decrease in iron absorption strength. These changes could be caused by absorber transverse motion or by ionizat…
Non-equilibrium ionization effects are important in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations but are computationally expensive. We study the effect of non-equilibrium ionization evolution and UV ionizing background (UVB) generated with different quasar spectral energy distribution (SED) on the derived physical conditions of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at $2\leq z \leq 6$ using our post-processing tool 'Code for Ionization and Temperature Evolution' (CITE). CITE produces results matching well with self-consistent simulations more efficiently. The HeII reionization progresses more rapidly in n…
In this paper, we present an intercomparison study of two quasars, SDSS J145618.32+340037.2 and SDSS J215331.50-025514.1, which have proximate damped Lya systems (PDLAs) with residual flux upon the Lya absorption trough. Though they both have residual flux as luminous as $10^{43}erg/s$, their PDLAs are quite different in, e.g., HI column density, metal line absorption strength, high-ionization absorption lines as well as residual flux strength. For J1456, the HI column density is $20.6\pm0.2$, with za=2.3138, nearly identical to the quasar redshift (z=2.3142) determined from the [OIII] emissio…
We study quasar proximity zones in the redshift range $5.77 \leq z \leq 6.54$ by homogeneously analyzing $34$ medium resolution spectra, encompassing both archival and newly obtained data, and exploiting recently updated systemic redshift and magnitude measurements. Whereas previous studies found strong evolution of proximity zone sizes with redshift, and argued that this provides evidence for a rapidly evolving intergalactic medium (IGM) neutral fraction during reionization, we measure a much shallower trend $\propto(1+z)^{-1.44}$. We compare our measured proximity zone sizes to predictions f…
We analyze relative abundances and ionization conditions in a strong absorption system at z=6.84, seen in the spectrum of the z=7.54 background quasar ULAS J134208.10+092838.61. Singly ionized C, Si, Fe, Mg, and Al measurements are consistent with a warm neutral medium that is metal-poor but not chemically pristine. Firm non-detections of C IV and Si IV imply that any warm ionized phase of the IGM or CGM has not yet been enriched past the ultra-metal-poor regime (<0.001Z_{solar}), unlike lower redshift DLAs where these lines are nearly ubiquitous. Relative abundances of the heavy elements 794 …
The intense radiation emitted by luminous quasars dramatically alters the ionization state of their surrounding IGM. This so-called proximity effect extends out to tens of Mpc, and manifests as large coherent regions of enhanced Lyman-$α$ (Ly$α$) forest transmission in absorption spectra of background sightlines. Here we present a novel method based on Ly$α$ forest tomography, which is capable of mapping these quasar `light echoes' in three dimensions. Using a dense grid (10-100) of faint ($m_r\approx24.7\,\mathrm{mag}$) background galaxies as absorption probes, one can measure the ionization …
FeLoBAL Outflow Variability Constraints from Multi-Year Observations
宽吸收线流出流的物理性质和动力学行为是理解星系中心与其宿主之间联系的关键主题。FeLoBALs(与低电离Fe II BALs的存在有关)是一类特殊的类星体流出物,约占BAL人口的1%。凭借其大的柱密度和明显的外流动力学光度,FeLoBALs似乎是非常强大的,是星系演化反馈的强有力的候选人。我们对12个发射红移在0.69和1.93之间的FeLoBAL类星体进行了变异性研究,这些类星体在类星体的休息框架中跨越了每周和多年的时间尺度。我们在我们的四个对象中检测到低电离物质(Fe II,Mg II)的吸收线变化,我们建立了一个有代表性的上限,吸收体与超大质量黑洞(SMBH)的距离约为20秒差距。我们的目标是了解产生可变性的机制(例如电离变化或气体穿过我们的视线),并对流出的位置,结构和动能施加新的约束。