2003/06/24 by Michael Juntao Yuan, Beverley J. Wills · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/378037
published as Astrophys.J.593:L11-L14,2003 · 18 pages including 5 figures and 1 table. Accepted by the Astrophysical Journal Letters
arxiv created 2003/06/24 · openalex publication_date 2003/07/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Broad absorption line (BAL) QSOs have been suggested to be youthful superaccretors based on their powerful radiatively driven absorbing outflows and often reddened continua. To test this hypothesis, we observed near-IR spectra of the Hβ region for 11 bright BAL QSOs at redshift z ~ 2. We measured these and literature spectra for six BAL QSOs and 13 radio-loud and seven radio-quiet non-BAL QSOs. Using the luminosity and Hβ broad line width to derive black hole mass and accretion rate, we find that both BAL and non-BAL QSOs at z ~ 2 tend to have higher L / L Edd than those at low z —probably a result of selecting the brightest QSOs. However, we find that the high- z QSOs, in particular the BAL QSOs, have extremely strong Fe II and very weak [O III], extending the inverse relationship found for low- z QSOs. This suggests that, even while radiating near L Edd , the BAL QSOs have a more plentiful fuel supply than non-BAL QSOs. Comparison with low- z QSOs shows for the first time that the inverse Fe II-[O III] relationship is indeed related to L / L Edd , rather than black hole mass.