The First HeI* 10830 Broad Absorption Line Quasar

Details The First HeI* 10830 Broad Absorption Line Quasar The First HeI* 10830 Broad Absorption Line Quasar

Feb 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010head...11.0703l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, HEAD meeting #11, #7.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.660

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We report discovery of the first metastable HeI* broad absorption line quasar using SpeX on IRTF. The blue-shifted absorption profile extends in velocity space from about -1,000 to -11,000 km/s, and it shows considerable velocity structure of the order of 1,000 km/s. The maximum apparent optical depth is 0.6. Integration over the 10830 apparent optical depth profile yields a lower limit on the log HeI* column density of
>14.3. Absorption is also seen in the HeI* λ3888Å line in optical spectra from SDSS and the MDM Hiltner telescope. These two transitions have the same lower level; thus, the covering fraction and optical depth can be determined. A pure partial covering model yields log HeI* column of 15.5-15.7, while a power law absorption distribution yields 16.1. These column densities are significantly larger than the lower limit because of the high ratio of the product of the wavelength and the oscillator strength (23.3). This property, plus the relatively low densities of HeI* in ionized gas, makes HeI* absorption a valuable probe of high column densities.
Cloudy simulations were performed to investigate the nature of the absorber. The HeI* column density yielded a lower limit on the log ionization parameter of -0.2 and a corresponding lower limit on the log hydrogen column density of 23. The latter value is at least an order of magnitude larger than those generally obtained from BALQSOs with spectra amenable to partial covering analysis. The lack of Balmer absorption provided an upper limit on the log density of 7. The log kinetic luminosity was constrained to be between 46 and 48, corresponding to at least 0.3% to a large fraction of the bolometric luminosity. A proposed Suzaku observation may remove model degeneracy between the spectral energy distribution and ionization parameter.
This work is funded by NSF AST-0707703.

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