CaII in Luminous Narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxies

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Scientific paper

FeII emission is an important component of the low-ionization broad-line emission in quasars, comprising up to 1/3 of the total line emission, and performing as a primary coolant. In addition, FeII potentially can be used as a probe of gas metallicity (i.e., preceding stellar evolution). However, FeII is difficult to study because the Fe+ ion yields a complex spectrum of several hundred-thousand emission lines. CaII has been shown to be a valuable surrogate for FeII, with the H&K lines analogous to the UV FeII, and the IR triplet analogous to optical FeII. The advantage of studying CaII compared with FeII is that while the gross atomic structure is similar, the number of lines is dramatically reduced (five versus thousands).
CaII H&K (3934, 3968Å) has rarely been identified in emission in quasars and AGN, possibly because the gas is very optically thick and the emission has been converted to the CaII IR triplet (8498, 85442, 8662Å), or because of absorption in the host galaxy. An exception is the luminous narrow-line quasar PHL 1811, and examination of quasars in the SDSS reveals a number of others that show CaII H&K as well, along with other objects that appear otherwise similar but do not have CaII H&K in their spectra.
We present preliminary results from observations using SpeX on the IRTF, NASA's 3m telescope on Mauna Kea, to study CaII IR triplet emission in a sample of quasars both with and without CaII H&K. The sample has a range of optical FeII/Hα914 ratios, and the IR CaII triplet/OI (8446Å) ratio follows roughly the same pattern. This behavior is expected if the IR CaII triplet is analogous to optical FeII, and the OI is produced by Bowen fluorescence. A range of CaII H&K/CaII IR triplet ratios is found. Additional results will be presented.

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