Related papers: Quasar bolometric corrections: theoretical conside…
The ultraviolet/optical continuum of quasars is thought to be from an accretion flow around a supermassive black hole, and it dominates the radiative output of quasars. However, the nature of this emission, often called the Big Blue Bump,…
Recent work has suggested that the fraction of obscured AGN declines with increasing luminosity, but it has been difficult to quantify this trend. Here, we attempt to measure this fraction as a function of luminosity by studying the ratio…
The influence of microlensing in the profiles of the emission lines generated in a biconical geometry is discussed. Microlensing amplification in this anisotropic model is not directly related to the bicone's intrinsic size but depends on…
The ensemble variability properties of nearly 23,000 quasars are studied using the Palomar-QUEST Survey. The survey has covered 15,000 square degrees multiple times over 3.5 years using 7 optical filters, and has been calibrated…
A 7.5 years spectrophotometric monitoring program of 28 Palomar-Green quasars to determine the size of their broad emission line region (BLR) is reviewed. We find both the continuum and the emission line fluxes of all quasars to vary during…
We present a model for spectrophotometric calibration errors in observations of quasars from the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and describe the correction…
We present estimates for the size and the logarithmic slope of the disk temperature profile of the lensed quasar Q2237+0305, independent of the component velocities. These estimates are based on six epochs of multi-wavelength narrowband…
We use gravitational microlensing to determine the size of the X-ray and optical emission regions of the quadruple lens system Q 2237+0305. The optical half-light radius, log(R_{1/2,V}/cm)=16.41\pm0.18 (at lambda_{rest}=2018 \AA), is…
Direct measurements of the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are key to understanding their growth and constrain their symbiotic relationship to their host galaxies. However, current methods used to directly measure black hole…
Weak emission-line quasars (WLQs) are a subset of Type 1 quasars that exhibit extremely weak Ly$\alpha +$N V $\lambda$1240 and/or C IV $\lambda$1549 emission lines. We investigate the relationship between emission-line properties and…
Quasar broad emission lines are largely powered by photoionization from the accretion continuum. Increased central luminosity will enhance line emissivity in more distant clouds, leading to increased average distance of the…
Microlensing has proven an effective probe of the structure of the innermost regions of quasars, and an important test of accretion disk models. We present light curves of the lensed quasar HE 0435-1223 in the R band and in the ultraviolet,…
We review results from our monitoring observations of several lensed quasars performed in the optical, UV, and X-ray bands. Modeling of the multi-wavelength light curves provides constraints on the extent of the optical, UV, and X-ray…
We present a reverberation mapping (RM) experiment that combines broad- and intermediate-band photometry; it is the first such attempt targeting a sample of 13 quasars at $0.2<z<0.9$. The quasars were selected to have strong H$\alpha$ or…
We propose a modified version of the observed non-linear relation between the X-ray (2 keV) and the ultraviolet (2500 \AA) emission in quasars (i.e. $L_{\rm X}\propto L_{\rm UV}^{\gamma}$) which involves the full width at half-maximum,…
We present the analysis of the rest frame ultraviolet and optical spectra of 30 bright blue quasars at $z\sim3$, selected to examine the suitability of AGN as cosmological probes. In our previous works, we found an unexpectedly high…
New multi-frequency radio observations of a large sample of radio-selected BAL quasars, along with a very well matched sample of normal quasars, are presented. The observations were made one immediately after the other at 4.9 and 8.4 GHz…
We use quadratic maximum-likelihood (QML) estimators to constrain models with Gaussian but statistically anisotropic Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) fluctuations, using CMB maps with realistic sky-coverage and instrumental noise. This…
The width of the broad emission lines in quasars is commonly characterized either by the full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) or the square root of the second moment of the line profile ($\sigma_{\rm line}$), and used as an indicator of the…
A small fraction of quasars have long been known to show bulk velocity offsets in the broad Balmer lines with respect to the systemic redshift of the host galaxy. Models to explain these offsets usually invoke broad-line region gas…