2021ApJ...914...13T -
Astrophys. J., 914, 13-13 (2021/June-2)
Ultradense gas tracked by unshifted broad absorption lines in a quasar.
TIAN Q., SHI X., HAO L., ZHOU Y., LI Z., JIANG P., WU S., YANG C., ZHANG S. and ZHOU H.
Abstract (from CDS):
We present a detailed analysis of the broad absorption line system in the quasar SDSS J122017.06+454941.1, which are clearly detected in hydrogen Lyman series and metal lines, such as C IV, Si IV, Si III, Al III, and C II, with a similar velocity as that of the broad emission lines. We reliably measured the column densities of H I, Al III, and C II, and obtained a low limit to Si IV and Si III. With the help of the photoionization simulations, we found that the absorption gas has a hydrogen number density nH ≃ 1011.03 cm–3 and a hydrogen column density NH ≃ 1021.0 cm–2, and is exposed to the radiation with an ionization parameter U ≃ 10–1.25, and thus located the absorber at ∼0.3 pc from the central supermassive black hole, remarkably similar to the radius of the broad-line region (BLR; 0.17-0.84 pc as estimated by the luminosity-radius relation) of the quasar. It is likely that our line of sight may happen to intercept the low-column part of the BLR with a high density similar to that of the inferred value of the absorber. We suggest that detection of Al III absorption line doublet in moderate quality quasar spectra could be a good indicator of dense gases, provided that the neutral hydrogen column density of the absorber is 15.4≲logNHI(cm–2)≲16.5.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Journal keyword(s):
Broad-absorption line quasar - Quasars - Active galactic nuclei
Simbad objects:
4
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