J/ApJ/950/97 A sample of Type 1 quasars with CIV & Hbeta data (Ha+, 2023)
Shedding new light on weak emission-line quasars in the CIV-Hβ parameter
space.
Ha T., Dix C., Matthews B.M., Shemmer O., Brotherton M.S., Myers A.D.,
Richards G.T., Maithil J., Anderson S.F., Brandt W.N.,
Diamond-Stanic A.M., Fan X., Gallagher S.C., Green R., Lira P., Luo B.,
Netzer H., Plotkin R.M., Runnoe J.C., Schneider D.P., Strauss M.A.,
Trakhtenbrot B., Wu J.
<Astrophys. J., 950, 97 (2023)>
=2023ApJ...950...97H 2023ApJ...950...97H
ADC_Keywords: QSOs; Active gal. nuclei; Redshifts; Equivalent widths;
Black holes; Ultraviolet; Optical
Keywords: Quasars ; Active galactic nuclei ; Supermassive black holes
Abstract:
Weak emission-line quasars (WLQs) are a subset of type 1 quasars that
exhibit extremely weak Lyα+NVλ1240 and/or CIVλ1549
emission lines. We investigate the relationship between emission-line
properties and accretion rate for a sample of 230 "ordinary" type 1
quasars and 18 WLQs at z<0.5 and 1.5<z<3.5 that have rest-frame
ultraviolet and optical spectral measurements. We apply a correction
to the Hβ-based black hole mass (MBH) estimates of these
quasars using the strength of the optical FeII emission. We confirm
previous findings that WLQs' MBH values are overestimated by up to
an order of magnitude using the traditional broad-emission-line region
size-luminosity relation. With this MBH correction, we find a
significant correlation between Hβ-based Eddington luminosity
ratios and a combination of the rest-frame CIV equivalent width and
CIV blueshift with respect to the systemic redshift. This correlation
holds for both ordinary quasars and WLQs, which suggests that the
two-dimensional CIV parameter space can serve as an indicator of
accretion rate in all type 1 quasars across a wide range of spectral
properties.
Description:
We compile a sample of 18 weak emission-line quasars (WLQs) that have
accurate full-width-at-half-maximum intensity of the broad component
of the Hβλ4861 emission line, monochromatic luminosity at
rest-frame 5100Å, EW(FeIIλλ4434-4684), and EW(Hβ)
measurements. See Section 2.1.
In order to create a comprehensive comparison sample of quasars for
our analysis, which requires measurements of both the Hβ and CIV
emission lines, we select two catalogs of ordinary quasars from the
literature. We utilize the GNIRS-DQS catalog in Paper I
(Matthews+ 2023, J/ApJ/950/95). To complement this sample of
high-redshift, high-luminosity quasars, we include an archival sample
of quasars in the low-redshift regime from
Baskin & laor (2004MNRAS.350L..31B 2004MNRAS.350L..31B) subsample also utilized in
Shemmer & Lieber (2015ApJ...805..124S 2015ApJ...805..124S).
See Section 2.2.
File Summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
table1.dat 112 18 Basic properties of the weak emission-line quasar
(WLQ) sample
table2.dat 111 230 Basic properties of the ordinary quasar sample
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also:
VII/289 : SDSS quasar catalog, sixteenth data release (DR16Q) (Lyke+, 2020)
J/AJ/122/503 : SDSS u*g*r*i*z* phot. and redshift of QSOs (Anderson+, 2001)
J/AJ/129/2542 : BL Lac from SDSS (Collinge+, 2005)
J/ApJS/166/470 : SDSS-Spitzer type I QSOs IR photometry (Richards+, 2006)
J/ApJ/699/782 : High-redshift SDSS-DR5 QSOs (Diamond-Stanic+, 2009)
J/ApJ/696/580 : Properties of weak emission-line QSOs (WLQ) (Shemmer+, 2009)
J/AJ/139/390 : Opt. selected BL Lac objects from SDSS-DR7 (Plotkin+, 2010)
J/ApJS/194/45 : QSO properties from SDSS-DR7 (Shen+, 2011)
J/ApJ/747/10 : X-ray and multiwavelength properties of 11 WLQs (Wu+, 2012)
J/ApJ/782/45 : SEAMBHs. I. Mrk 142, Mrk 335 & IRAS F12397+3333 (Du+, 2014)
J/A+A/568/A114 : SDSS quasars with weak emission lines (Meusinger+, 2014)
J/ApJ/805/122 : X-ray properties of PHL1811 analogs and WLQs (Luo+, 2015)
J/ApJS/216/4 : SDSS-RM project: technical overview (Shen+, 2015)
J/ApJS/227/11 : PS1 z>5.6 quasars follow-up (Banados+, 2016)
J/ApJ/818/L14 : RM AGNs accretion rates and BH masses (Du+, 2016)
J/ApJ/817/55 : NIR spectroscopy of 1.5<z<3.5 broad-band QSOs (Shen, 2016)
J/ApJ/831/7 : SDSS-RM project: peak velocities of QSOs (Shen+, 2016)
J/ApJ/856/6 : SEAMBHs IX. 10 new Hβ light curves (Du+, 2018)
J/ApJ/886/42 : Reverberation mapping & opt. sp. data of AGNs (Du+, 2019)
J/ApJ/873/35 : Gemini GNIRS NIR sp. of 50 QSOs at z≳5.7 (Shen+, 2019)
J/MNRAS/488/1519 : Calibration of the virial factor f in SMBHs (Yu+, 2019)
J/MNRAS/492/719 : Chandra obs. of 2106 radio-quiet QSOs (Timlin+, 2020)
J/ApJ/901/133 : BH masses of reverberation-mapped AGNs (Yu+, 2020)
J/MNRAS/491/5881 : Extended size-luminosity relation for RM AGNs (Yu+, 2020)
J/ApJS/252/15 : GNIRS-Distant Quasar Survey (GNIRS-DQS) (Matthews+, 2021)
J/AJ/162/270 : VLA observation of 50 z∼1.65 quasars (Richards+, 2021)
J/ApJ/931/154 : High-quality UV & X-ray quasar spectral data (Rivera+, 2022)
J/ApJ/950/95 : GNIRS-DQS: SDSS 1.5<z<3.5 QSOs (Matthews+, 2023)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table[12].dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 24 A24 --- Name Name of source
26- 30 F5.3 --- zsys [0.019/3.55] Systemic redshift
32- 36 F5.2 [10-7W] logL5100 [43.54/47.14] Log monochromatic luminosity
at rest-frame 5100Å;
logνLν(5100Å)
38- 42 I5 km/s FWHM(Hb) [830/12197] Hbeta emission line FWHM
44- 47 F4.2 --- RFeII [0/3.31] Equivalent width of FeII divided
by equivalent width of Hbeta
49 A1 --- f_RFeII [c] Flag on RFeII (1)
51- 55 F5.2 [Msun] logMBH [6.86/10.6] Log black hole mass using
traditional estimation
57- 61 F5.2 [Msun] logMBHc [6.5/10.32] Log black hole mass using
RFeII correction
63- 66 F4.2 --- LEdd [0.01/2.8] Eddington luminosity ratio using
traditional estimation
68- 72 F5.2 --- LEddc [0.01/15.1] Eddington luminosity ratio
using RFeII correction
74- 78 F5.1 0.1nm EWCIV [0.4/290] Rest-frame CIV emission line
equivalent width
80- 83 F4.1 0.1nm e_EWCIV [0/10.1]? Lower uncertainty in EWCIV (2)
85- 88 F4.1 0.1nm E_EWCIV [0/15]? Upper uncertainty in EWCIV (2)
90- 94 I5 km/s CIVb [-1388/9062] Blueshift of the CIV
emission-line peak
96- 99 I4 km/s e_CIVb [0/1977] Lower uncertainty in CIVb (2)
101-104 I4 km/s E_CIVb [0/4178] Upper uncertainty in CIVb (2)
106 A1 --- f_CIVb [b] Flag on CIVb (1)
108 I1 --- Ref1 [1/9] Source of rest-frame optical data (3)
110-112 A3 --- Ref2 Source(s) of rest-frame UV (CIV) data (3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note (1): Flag as follows:
b = Wu+ (2011ApJ...736...28W 2011ApJ...736...28W) also reported Hβ-based
Blueshift(CIV)=9400km/s. Here, we have opted to use a MgII-based
value of Blueshift(CIV).
c = Leighly+ (2007ApJS..173....1L 2007ApJS..173....1L) reported the RFeII value as being in the
range 1.22-1.35. We have adopted a mean value of 1.29 for this work.
Note (2): BL04 (PG quasars; Baskin & Loar 2004MNRAS.350L..31B 2004MNRAS.350L..31B) did not
report the uncertainties in EW-CIV and Blueshift-CIV, so they are
listed as zero.
Note (3): References as follows:
1 = GNIRS-DQS; Matthews et al. (Paper I; 2023, J/ApJ/950/95)
2 = GNIRS-DQS; Dix et al. (Paper II; 2023, J/ApJ/950/96)
3 = Plotkin et al. (2015ApJ...805..123P 2015ApJ...805..123P)
4 = this work
5 = Shemmer et al. (2010ApJ...722L.152S 2010ApJ...722L.152S)
6 = Shen et al. (2011, J/ApJS/194/45)
7 = Wu et al. (2011ApJ...736...28W 2011ApJ...736...28W)
8 = Leighly et al. (2007ApJS..173....1L 2007ApJS..173....1L)
9 = Boroson & Green (1992ApJS...80..109B 1992ApJS...80..109B)
10 = Baskin & Laor (2005MNRAS.356.1029B 2005MNRAS.356.1029B)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History:
From electronic version of the journal
References:
Matthews et al. GNIRS-DQS 2021ApJS..252...15M 2021ApJS..252...15M Cat. J/ApJS/252/15
Matthews et al. GNIRS-DQS I. 2023ApJ...950...95M 2023ApJ...950...95M Cat. J/ApJ/950/95
Dix et al. GNIRS-DQS II. 2023ApJ...950...96D 2023ApJ...950...96D Cat. J/ApJ/950/96
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 01-Aug-2025