THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY REVERBERATION MAPPING PROJECT: RAPID C iv BROAD ABSORPTION LINE VARIABILITY
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, 525 Davey Laboratory, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 (Canada)
- Carnegie Observatories, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 (United States)
- Faculty of Sciences, Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences, Erciyes University, 38039 Kayseri (Turkey)
- Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871 (China)
- Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, 140 West 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871 (China)
- Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721-0065 (United States)
- INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via G. B. Tiepolo 11, I-34131 Trieste (Italy)
- Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille, Aix-Marseille Universite, CNRS /IN2P3, 163, avenue de Luminy, Case 902, F-13288 Marseille Cedex 09 (France)
- PITT PACC, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, 3941 O’Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 (United States)
- Apache Point Observatory and New Mexico State University, P.O. Box 59, Sunspot, NM, 88349-0059 (United States)
We report the discovery of rapid variations of a high-velocity C iv broad absorption line trough in the quasar SDSS J141007.74+541203.3. This object was intensively observed in 2014 as a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project, during which 32 epochs of spectroscopy were obtained with the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey spectrograph. We observe significant (>4σ) variability in the equivalent width (EW) of the broad (∼4000 km s{sup −1} wide) C iv trough on rest-frame timescales as short as 1.20 days (∼29 hr), the shortest broad absorption line variability timescale yet reported. The EW varied by ∼10% on these short timescales, and by about a factor of two over the duration of the campaign. We evaluate several potential causes of the variability, concluding that the most likely cause is a rapid response to changes in the incident ionizing continuum. If the outflow is at a radius where the recombination rate is higher than the ionization rate, the timescale of variability places a lower limit on the density of the absorbing gas of n{sub e} ≳ 3.9 × 10{sup 5} cm{sup −3}. The broad absorption line variability characteristics of this quasar are consistent with those observed in previous studies of quasars, indicating that such short-term variability may in fact be common and thus can be used to learn about outflow characteristics and contributions to quasar/host-galaxy feedback scenarios.
- OSTI ID:
- 22522302
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 806, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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