Related papers: Quasar emission lines as virial luminosity estimat…

We propose a proper method to measure the size of the narrow line region (NLR) in distant quasars. The apparent angular size of the NLR is, in general, too small to resolve technically. However, it is possible to map the NLR if with…

Quasar spectra have a variety of absorption lines whose origins range from energetic winds expelled from the central engines to unrelated, intergalactic clouds. We present multi-epoch, medium resolution spectra of eight quasars at z~2 that…

Associated absorption lines (AALs) in quasar spectra are valuable probes of the gas kinematics and physical conditions in quasar environments. The host galaxies are by definition in an active evolution stage that might involve large-scale…

The longstanding question of the extent to which the quasar population is affected by dust extinction, within host galaxies or galaxies along the line of sight, remains open. More generally, the spectral energy distributions of quasars vary…

Broad absorption line (BAL) quasars have been studied for over thirty years. Yet it is still unclear why and when we observe broad absorption lines in quasars. Is this phenomenon caused by geometry or is it connected with the evolution…

We present here a new method using interferometric measurements of quasars, that allows the determination of direct geometrical distances on cosmic scales. Quasar Broad Emission Line Regions sizes provide a "meter rule" with which to…

A quasar wind model is proposed to describe the spatial and velocity structure of the broad line region. This model requires detailed photoionization and magnetohydrodynamic simulation, as the broad line region it too small for direct…

Motivated by recent progress in the statistical modeling of quasar variability, we develop a new approach to measuring emission-line reverberation lags to estimate the size of broad-line regions (BLRs) in active galactic nuclei. Assuming…

Black Hole Mass (M_BH) estimation in quasars, especially at high redshift, involves use of single epoch spectra with s/n and resolution that permit accurate measurement of the width of a broad line assumed to be a reliable virial estimator.…

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…

Over the past 15 years, examples of exotic radio-quiet quasars with intrinsically weak or absent broad emission line regions (BELRs) have emerged from large-scale spectroscopic sky surveys. Here, we present spectroscopy of seven such weak…

The transmission grating spectrometers on AXAF have sufficient sensitivity and energy resolution to detect resonance X-ray absorption lines in the spectra of distant quasars. Such lines would be produced in an ionized, and somewhat…

We show that the parameter space of axion-like particles can be severly constrained using high-precision measurements of quasar polarisations. Robust limits are derived from the measured bounds on optical circular polarisation and from the…

Recent observations of Broad Absorption Line (BAL) quasars demonstrated that the soft X-ray emission of these objects is extremely weak and convincing evidence for very strong absorption by a high column density (~ 10^23.5 cm^-2) was…

We aim at characterizing the X-ray-to-optical/near-infrared broad-band emission of luminous QSOs in the first Gyr of cosmic evolution to understand whether they exhibit differences compared to the lower-\textit{z} QSO population. Our goal…

Recent studies have shown that line profile distortions are commonly observed in gravitationally lensed quasar spectra. We investigate the effect of gravitational microlensing on quasar broad emission line profiles and their underlying…

Quasars have been proposed as a new class of standard candles analogous to Supernovae, as their large redshift range and high luminosities make them excellent candidates. Reverberation mapping (RM) method enables to estimate the distance to…

Many years of study have failed to conclusively establish relations between a quasar's spectral energy distribution (SED) and the emission lines it is thought to produce. This is at least partially due to the lack of well-observed SEDs. We…

We report the results from an ASCA observation of the high-luminosity, radio-loud quasar PKS 0637-752 (redshift 0.654), covering the 0.8-15 keV band in the quasar-frame. We find the source to have a luminosity ~10^46 erg/s in the 2-10 keV…

Lensed quasars are powerful cosmic laboratories; they are used to simultaneously probe various astrophysical phenomena. Microlensing by stars within distant galaxies acts as strong gravitational lenses of multiply imaged quasars, and…