Physics Commons^™

High Metal Enrichments In Luminous Quasars, Gary J. Ferland, Jack A. Baldwin, Kirk T. Korista, Fred Hamann, R. F. Carswell, Mark Phillips, Belinda J. Wilkes, Robert E. Williams

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We discuss observations of the broad emission line in luminous intermediate redshift quasars, with emphasis on Q0207 -398. This object has relatively sharp lines, allowing us to deconvolve the profiles into distinct components. In this paper we examine the high ionization region, which we show must be matter-bounded, partially transparent to ionizing radiation. We measure a large N V λ1240/He II λ1640 ratio in Q0207-398, but detailed calculations predict this ratio to be ~1 for standard cloud properties. We show that no choice of incident continuum, ionizing photon flux, density, or even the appeal to nonradiative energy sources, can reproduce …