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- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/836/186
- Title:
- Continuum-band lags in SDSS QSOs from PS1 obs.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/836/186
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We study the time lags between the continuum emission of quasars at different wavelengths, based on more than four years of multi-band (g, r, i, z) light curves in the Pan-STARRS Medium Deep Fields. As photons from different bands emerge from different radial ranges in the accretion disk, the lags constrain the sizes of the accretion disks. We select 240 quasars with redshifts of z~1 or z~0.3 that are relatively emission-line free. The light curves are sampled from day to month timescales, which makes it possible to detect lags on the scale of the light crossing time of the accretion disks. With the code JAVELIN, we detect typical lags of several days in the rest frame between the g band and the riz bands. The detected lags are ~2-3 times larger than the light crossing time estimated from the standard thin disk model, consistent with the recently measured lag in NGC 5548 and microlensing measurements of quasars. The lags in our sample are found to increase with increasing luminosity. Furthermore, the increase in lags going from g-r to g-i and then to g-z is slower than predicted in the thin disk model, particularly for high-luminosity quasars. The radial temperature profile in the disk must be different from what is assumed. We also find evidence that the lags decrease with increasing line ratios between ultraviolet Fe II lines and Mg II, which may point to changes in the accretion disk structure at higher metallicity.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/590/A10
- Title:
- 3C 279 optical photometry and polarimetry
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/590/A10
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Over the past few years, several occasions of large, continuous rotations of the electric vector position angle (EVPA) of linearly polarized optical emission from blazars have been reported. These events are often coincident with high energy gamma-ray flares and they have attracted considerable attention, as they could allow one to probe the magnetic field structure in the gamma-ray emitting region of the jet. The flat-spectrum radio quasar 3C 279 is one of the most prominent examples showing this behaviour. Our goal is to study the observed EVPA rotations and to distinguish between a stochastic and a deterministic origin of the polarization variability. We have combined multiple data sets of R-band photometry and optical polarimetry measurements of 3C 279, yielding exceptionally well-sampled flux density and polarization curves that cover a period of 2008-2012. Several large EVPA rotations are identified in the data. We introduce a quantitative measure for the EVPA curve smoothness, which is then used to test a set of simple random walk polarization variability models against the data. 3C 279 shows different polarization variation characteristics during an optical low-flux state and a flaring state. The polarization variation during the flaring state, especially the smooth approx. 360 deg. rotation of the EVPA in mid-2011, is not consistent with the tested stochastic processes. We conclude that during the two different optical flux states, two different processes govern the polarization variation, possibly a stochastic process during the low-brightness state and a deterministic process during the flaring activity.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/407/899
- Title:
- Core dominance in extragalactic radio sources
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/407/899
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- In this paper, based on a paper by Liu and Zhang (2002, Cat. <J/A+A/381/757>), we have chosen a sample of 542 extragalactic sources (27 BL Lac objects, 300 galaxies (radio galaxies and Seyfert galaxies), and 215 quasars), for which we have calculated the core-dominance parameters and investigated the relation between core-dominance parameter and the core and extended luminosities. The core-dominance parameter of galaxies is smaller than that in quasars, which is smaller than that in BL Lac objects.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/465/2120
- Title:
- Correcting CIV-based virial black hole masses
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/465/2120
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The CIV{lambda}{lambda}1498,1501 broad emission line is visible in optical spectra to redshifts exceeding z~5. CIV has long been known to exhibit significant displacements to the blue and these 'blueshifts' almost certainly signal the presence of strong outflows. As a consequence, single-epoch virial black hole (BH) mass estimates derived from CIV velocity widths are known to be systematically biased compared to masses from the hydrogen Balmer lines. Using a large sample of 230 high-luminosity (L_Bol_=10^45.5^-10^48^erg/s), redshift 1.5<z<4.0 quasars with both CIV and Balmer line spectra, we have quantified the bias in CIV BH masses as a function of the CIV blueshift. CIV BH masses are shown to be a factor of 5 larger than the corresponding Balmer-line masses at C IV blueshifts of 3000km/s and are overestimated by almost an order of magnitude at the most extreme blueshifts, ?=5000km/s. Using the monotonically increasing relationship between the CIV blueshift and the mass ratio BH(CIV)/BH(H{alpha}), we derive an empirical correction to all CIV BH masses. The scatter between the corrected CIV masses and the Balmer masses is 0.24dex at low CIV blueshifts (~0km/s) and just 0.10dex at high blueshifts (~3000km/s), compared to 0.40dex before the correction. The correction depends only on the CIV line properties - i.e. full width at half-maximum and blueshift - and can therefore be applied to all quasars where CIV emission line properties have been measured, enabling the derivation of unbiased virial BH-mass estimates for the majority of high-luminosity, high-redshift, spectroscopically confirmed quasars in the literature.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/other/PASA/30.4
- Title:
- Corrections to the VV13 Catalogue
- Short Name:
- J/other/PASA/30.
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Fixes are presented to be applied to the Veron-Cetty and Veron (VCV) Quasar Catalogue, 13th edition (Cat. VII/258). These are comprised of 39 deduplicati ons, 380 astrometric moves of 8+ arcseconds of which 31 are over 10 arcminutes, and 30 indicated delistings.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/887/5
- Title:
- COS CGM compendium (CCC). III. z<=1 Ly{alpha} syst.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/887/5
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We characterize the metallicities and physical properties of cool, photoionized gas in a sample of 152 z<=1 strong Ly{alpha} forest systems (SLFSs, absorbers with 15<logN_HI_<16.2). The sample is drawn from our Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) circumgalactic medium compendium (CCC), an ultraviolet survey of HI-selected circumgalactic gas around z<=1 galaxies that targets 261 absorbers with 15<logN_HI_<19. We show that the metallicity probability distribution function of the SLFSs at z<=1 is unimodal, skewed to low metallicities with a mean and median of [X/H]=-1.47 and -1.18dex. Very metal-poor gas with [X/H]{<}-1.4 represents about half of the population of absorbers with 15<logN_HI_<=18, while it is rare at higher N_HI_. Thus, there are important reservoirs of primitive (though not pristine) diffuse ionized gas around z<=1 galaxies. The photoionized gas around z<=1 galaxies is highly inhomogeneous based on the wide range of metallicities observed (-3<=[X/H]<=+0.4) and the fact that there are large metallicity variations (factors of 2 to 25) for most of the closely spaced absorbers ({Delta}v<=300km/s) along the same sightlines. These absorbers show a complex evolution with redshift and HI column density, and we identify subtle cosmic evolution effects that affect the interpretation of metallicity distributions and comparison with other absorber samples. We discuss the physical conditions and cosmic baryon and metal budgets of the CCC absorbers. Finally, we compare the CCC results to recent cosmological zoom simulations and explore the origins of the 15<logN_HI_<19 absorbers within the Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments (EAGLE) high-resolution simulations.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/669/821
- Title:
- CO Tully-Fisher relation for host galaxies of QSOs
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/669/821
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The integrated line width derived from CO spectroscopy provides a powerful tool to study the internal kinematics of extragalactic objects, including quasars at high redshift, provided that the observed line width can be properly translated to more conventionally used kinematical parameters of galaxies. We show, through the construction of a Ks-band CO Tully-Fisher relation for nearby galaxies spanning a wide range in infrared luminosity, that the CO line width measured at 20% of the peak intensity, when corrected for inclination and other effects, successfully recovers the maximum rotation velocity of the disk. The line width at 50% of the peak intensity performs much more poorly, in large part because CO lines have a wide range of profiles, which are shown to vary systematically with infrared luminosity. We present a practical prescription for converting observed CO line widths into the stellar velocity dispersion of the bulge ({sigma}*) and then apply it to a sample of low-redshift (z<~0.2) and high-redshift (1.4<~z<~6.4) quasars to study their host galaxies.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/430/3445
- Title:
- Covering factor of warm dust in quasars
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/430/3445
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- By combining newly obtained infrared photometric data from the All-Sky Data Release of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with spectroscopic data from the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we study the covering factor of warm dust (CFWD) for a large quasar sample, as well as the relations between CFWD and other physical parameters of quasars. We find a strong correlation between the flux ratio in the mid-infrared to near-ultraviolet and the slope of the near-ultraviolet spectra, which is interpreted as a dust extinction effect. After correcting for dust extinction utilizing the above correlation, we examine the relations between CFWD and active galactic nucleus properties: bolometric luminosity (L_bol_), black hole mass (M_BH_) and Eddington ratio (L/L_Edd_). We confirm the anticorrelation between CFWD and L_bol_. Further, we find that CFWD is anticorrelated with M_BH_ but is independent of L/L_Edd_. Radio-loud quasars are found to follow the same correlations as radio-quiet quasars. Monte Carlo simulations show that the anisotropy of the UV-optical continuum of the accretion disc can have a significant effect, but is not likely to dominate the CFWD-L_bol_ correlation.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/623/A111
- Title:
- 3C273 polarization over ALMA 1.3mm band
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/623/A111
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We studied the polarization behavior of the quasar 3C 273 over the 1mm wavelength band at ALMA with a total bandwidth of 7.5GHz across 223-243GHz at 0.8" resolution, corresponding to 2.1kpc at the distance of 3C 273. With these observations we were able to probe the optically thin polarized emission close to the jet base, and constrain the magnetic field structure. We computed the Faraday rotation measure using simple linear fitting and Faraday rotation measure synthesis. In addition, we modeled the broadband behavior of the fractional Stokes Q and U parameters (qu-fitting). The systematic uncertainties in the polarization observations at ALMA were assessed through Monte Carlo simulations. We find the unresolved core of 3C 273 to be 1.8% linearly polarized. We detect a very high rotation measure (RM) of (5.0+/-0.3)x10^5^rad/m^2^ over the 1 mm band when assuming a single polarized component and an external RM screen. This results in a rotation of >40{deg} of the intrinsic electric vector position angle, which is significantly higher than typically assumed for millimeter wavelengths. The polarization fraction increases as a function of wavelength, which according to our qu-fitting could be due to multiple polarized components of different Faraday depth within our beam or to internal Faraday rotation. With our limited wavelength coverage we cannot distinguish between the cases, and additional multifrequency and high angular resolution observations are needed to determine the location and structure of the magnetic field of the Faraday active region. Comparing our RM estimate with values obtained at lower frequencies, the RM increases as a function of observing frequency, following a power law with an index of 2.0+/-0.2, consistent with a sheath surrounding a conically expanding jet. We also detect ~0.2% circular polarization, although further observations are needed to confirm this result.
