2010AJ....140.1960M

We present XMM-Newton observations of the broad absorption line (BAL) quasar FBQS J131213.5+231958. The X-ray spectrum of the source can be well described by an absorbed power-law model in which the absorber is either ionized or only partially covers the continuum source. This can explain the apparent lack of absorption observed in the Chandra spectrum with low signal-to-noise ratio. While the power-law slope of the spectrum is similar to that of non-BAL radio-loud quasars, the Eddington luminosity ratio is likely to be significantly higher than the mean. This shows that in high-mass black holes (BHs), high Eddington accretion may not result in as steep of a spectrum as in lower-mass BHs. This provides important constraints for accretion disk models. It also provides support to the idea that BAL quasars, at least their radio-loud subclass, represent an early evolutionary stage of quasars.