Related papers: Weak Emission Line Quasars in the Context of a Mod…
Quasars accreting at very high rates are believed to be prime movers of galactic evolution because of their high radiative and mechanical output. The study presented in this paper investigates a sample of six highly accreting quasars at…
Weak-emission-line QSOs (WLQs) are an enigmatic subclass of the QSO population, as their optical/UV spectra are marked by abnormally weak (or absent) emission lines. To obtain much-needed additional clues to the origin of this and other…
The diverse properties of broad-line quasars appear to follow a well-defined main sequence along which the optical FeII strength increases. It has been suggested that this sequence is mainly driven by the Eddington ratio (L/L_Edd) of the…
Using a sample of high-redshift lensed quasars from the CASTLES project with observed-frame ultraviolet or optical and near-infrared spectra, we have searched for possible biases between supermassive black hole (BH) mass estimates based on…
Blazars are classically divided into the BL Lac (BLL) and Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasar (FSRQ) subclasses, corresponding to radiatively inefficient and efficient accretion regimes, respectively, largely based on the equivalent width (EW) of…
We study the rest-frame optical properties of 74 luminous (L_bol=10^46.2-48.2 erg/s), 1.5<z<3.5 broad-line quasars with near-IR (JHK) slit spectroscopy. Systemic redshifts based on the peak of the [OIII]5007 line reveal that redshift…
Investigation of quasar emission line properties and relationships between spectral parameters is important for understanding the physical mechanisms that originate inside different regions of the active galactic nuclei. In this paper, we…
Super-Eddington accretion is a crucial phase in the growth of supermassive black holes. However, identifying super-Eddington accreting quasars observationally is challenging due to uncertain black-hole mass estimates and other…
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…
Weak emission line quasars are a rare and puzzling group of objects. In this paper we present one more object of this class found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The quasar SDSS J094533.99+100950.1, lying at z = 1.66, has…
Extremely variable quasars (EVQs) are a population of sources showing large optical photometric variability revealed by time-domain surveys. The physical origin of such extreme variability is yet unclear. In this first paper of a series, we…
After a short review of the quasar problem and what we can hope to learn from their emission line spectra, I discuss the current body of knowledge concerning quasar emission lines and their relationships to the local and ionizing continua.…
We recently proposed the equivalent width (EW) of the narrow [OIII]5007{\AA} emission line as an orientation indicator for active galactic nuclei. We tested this method on about $12,300$ optically selected broad line quasars from the SDSS…
We jointly constrain the luminosity function (LF) and black hole mass function (BHMF) of broad-line quasars with forward Bayesian modeling in the quasar mass-luminosity plane, based on a homogeneous sample of ~ 58,000 SDSS DR7 quasars at z…
Using 190,000 spectra from the seventeenth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we investigate the ultraviolet emission line properties in z=2 quasars. Specifically, we quantify how the shape of CIV 1549A and the equivalent width…
We identify a sample of 74 high-redshift quasars (z>3) with weak emission lines from the Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and present infrared, optical, and radio observations of a subsample of four objects at z>4. These…
We investigate the dependence on data quality of quasar properties measured from the CIV emission line region at high redshifts. Our measurements come from 32 epochs of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Reverberation Mapping Project…
We address the effect of orientation of the accretion disk plane and the geometry of the broad-line region (BLR) as part of an effort to understand the distribution of quasars in the optical plane of the quasar main sequence. We utilize the…
This paper presents new optical and near-UV spectra of 11 extremely powerful jetted quasars, with radio to optical flux density ratio $>$ 10$^3$, that concomitantly cover the low-ionization emission of \mgii\ and \hb\ as well as the \feii\…
Broad absorption line quasars (BALQs) present a large diversity in their broad absorption line (BAL) profiles. To investigate what physical parameters underlie this diversity, we construct a sample of BALQs which covers lambda_rest ~…