Related papers: The buried Balmer-edge signatures from quasars
We have found for the first time a Balmer edge feature in the polarized flux spectrum of a quasar (Ton 202). The edge feature is seen as a discontinuity in the slope, rather than as a discontinuity in the absolute flux. Since the polarized…
We have found for the first time a Balmer edge feature in the Big Blue Bump emission of a quasar. The feature is seen in the polarized flux spectrum of the quasar, where all the emissions from outside the nucleus are scraped off and…
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,…
Thermal models for the quasar Big Blue Bump generally lead to bound-free continuum features, which may be in absorption or emission. Searches for Lyman edges attributable to quasar atmospheres (in particular accretion disk atmospheres) have…
Polarized emission from a quasar is produced by wavelength-independent electron scattering surrounding its accretion disc, and thus avoid the contamination from its host galaxy and reveal the intrinsic emission spectrum of the accretion…
One primary difficulty in understanding the nature of the putative accretion disk in the central engine of AGNs is that some of its key intrinsic spectral signatures are buried under the emissions from the surrounding regions, i.e. the…
The near-infrared shape of the big blue bump component in quasar spectra has been essentially unknown. It usually cannot be observed directly, due to the strong hot dust emission which dominates quasar spectra longward of ~1micron. However…
Roughly 10% of all quasars exhibit Broad Absorption Line (BAL) features which appear to arise in material outflowing at high velocity from the active galactic nucleus (AGN). The details of this outflow are, however, very poorly constrained…
We present new spectropolarimetric observations of 8 radio-loud broad absorption line (BAL) quasars, and combine these new data with our previous spectropolarimetric atlases (of both radio-loud and radio-quiet objects) in order to…
A crucial difficulty in understanding the nature of the putative accretion disk in AGNs is that some of its key intrinsic spectral signatures cannot be observed directly. The strong emissions from the broad-line region (BLR) and the…
We report the emergence of a high velocity, broad absorption line outflow in the luminous quasar Ton 34, at z=1.928. The outflow is detected through an ultraviolet CIV broad absorption line, in a spectrum obtained in January 2006 by the…
I report the discovery of blueshifted broad absorption line (BAL) troughs in at least six transitions of the Balmer series of hydrogen (Hbeta to H9) and in CaII, MgII and excited FeII in the quasar SDSS J125942.80+121312.6. This is only the…
A key to understanding quasar unification paradigms is the emission properties of broad absorption line quasars (BALQs). The fact that only a small fraction of quasar spectra exhibit deep absorption troughs blueward of the broad permitted…
We present a spectropolarimetric survey of 36 broad absorption line quasi-stellar objects (BAL QSOs). The continuum, absorption trough, and emission line polarization of BAL QSOs yield clues about their structure. We confirm that BAL QSOs…
If the disappearance of the broad emission lines observed in changing-look quasars originates from the obscuration of the quasar core by dusty clouds moving in the torus, high linear optical polarization would be expected in those objects.…
It is widely accepted that the broad absorption line region (BALR) exists in most (if not all) quasars with a small covering factor. Recent works showed that the BALR is optically thick to soft and even medium energy X-rays, with a typical…
Optical spectropolarimetry carried out by Kishimoto et al. (2004) has shown that several luminous type 1 quasars show a strong decrease of the polarized continuum flux in the rest-frame near-UV wavelengths of $\lambda<4000$\AA. In the…
The broad absorption line (BAL) features seen in a small fraction of quasar optical/UV spectra are attributed to bulk outflows away from the quasar core. Observational evidence suggests that dust plays a key role in these systems, although…
Broad absorption lines (BALs) found in a significant fraction of quasar spectra identify high-velocity outflows that might be present in all quasars and could be a major factor in feedback to galaxy evolution. Understanding the nature of…
We review recent results on quasars from the SDSS as they relate to our understanding of the UV/optical continuum, the broad emission line region, and the broad absorption line region. The ensemble average colors of large numbers of quasars…