Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Locally Optimally Emitting Clouds And The Origin Of Quasar Emission Lines, Jack Baldwin, Gary J. Ferland, Kirk Korista, Dima Verner

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

The similarity of quasar line spectra has been taken as an indication that the emission line clouds have preferred parameters, suggesting that the environment is subject to a fine-tuning process. We show here that the observed spectrum is a natural consequence of powerful selection effects. We computed a large grid of photoionization models covering the widest possible range of cloud gas density and distance from the central continuum source. For each line only a narrow range of density and distance from the continuum source results in maximum reprocessing efficiency, corresponding to "locally optimally emitting clouds" (LOCs). These parameters depend on …