English

Do broad absorption line quasars live in different environments from ordinary quasars?

Astrophysics 2009-06-23 v1

Abstract

We select a sample of 4200\sim 4200 traditionally defined broad absorption line quasars (BALQs) from the Fifth Data Release quasar catalog of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For a statistically homogeneous quasar sample with 1.7z4.21.7\le z\le 4.2, the BAL quasar fraction is 14\sim 14% and is almost constant with redshift. We measure the auto-correlation of non-BAL quasars (nonBALQs) and the cross-correlation of BALQs with nonBALQs using this statistically homogeneous sample, both in redshift space and using the projected correlation function. We find no significant difference between the clustering strengths of BALQs and nonBALQs. Assuming a power-law model for the real space correlation function ξ(r)=(r/r0)1.8\xi(r)=(r/r_0)^{-1.8}, the correlation length for nonBALQs is r0=7.6±0.8h1Mpcr_0=7.6\pm 0.8 h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}; for BALQs, the cross-correlation length is r0=7.4±1.1h1Mpcr_0=7.4\pm 1.1 h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}. Our clustering results suggest that BALQs live in similar large-scale environments as do nonBALQs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0712.2042,
  title  = {Do broad absorption line quasars live in different environments from ordinary quasars?},
  author = {Yue Shen and Michael A. Strauss and Patrick B. Hall and Donald P. Schneider and Donald G. York and Neta A. Bahcall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.2042},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

accepted for publication in ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:53:29.412Z