We present a study of 9242 spectroscopically-confirmed quasars with multi-epoch ugriz photometry from the SDSS Southern Survey. By fitting a separable linear model to each quasar's spectral variations, we decompose their five-band spectral energy distributions into variable (disc) and non-variable (host galaxy) components. In modelling the disc spectra, we include attenuation by dust on the line of sight through the host galaxy to its nucleus. We consider five commonly used attenuation laws, and find that the best description is by dust similar to that of the Small Magellanic Cloud, inferring a lack of carbonaceous grains from the relatively weak 2175AA absorption feature. We go on to construct a composite spectrum for the quasar variations spanning 700 to 8000AA. By varying the assumed power-law $L_ν\proptoν^α$ spectral slope, we find a best-fit value $α=0.71\pm0.02$, excluding at high confidence the canonical $L_ν\proptoν^{1/3}$ prediction for a steady-state accretion disc with a $T\propto r^{-3/4}$ temperature profile. The bluer spectral index of the observed quasar variations instead supports the model of Mummery & Balbus in which a steeper temperature profile, $T\propto r^{-7/8}$, develops as a result of finite magnetically-induced stress at the innermost stable circular orbit extracting energy and angular momentum from the black hole spin.
The Total and Polarized Radio Emission from the Innermost Jets of a High-Redshift Quasar and a Candidate at Parsec-Scale Resolution
ELTE Eötvös Loránd University（罗兰大学）；HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences（匈牙利研究科学院天文学与地球科学研究中心）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海天文台）；Chalmers University of Technology（查尔姆斯理工大学）
JWST lensed quasar dark matter survey V: Hints of self-interacting dark matter from 29 quadruply imaged quasars
University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）；Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago（芝加哥大学卡弗里宇宙学物理研究所）；University of California, Merced（加州大学默塞德分校）；Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics（理论物理前沿研究所）；Carnegie Observatories（卡内基观测站）；University of California, Los Angeles（加州大学洛杉矶分校）；University of California, Irvine（加州大学尔湾分校）；Universidad Andres Bello（安德烈斯贝略大学）；Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Chile（智利天体物理千年研究所）；California Polytechnic State University（加州州立理工大学）
