Physics Commons^™

A Masing [Fe Xi] Line, Gary J. Ferland

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

I draw attention to a maser which occurs within the ground term of Fe¹⁰⁺. In many photoionized environments, infrared fine-structure lines and the [O I] λ6300 line become optically thick but maser amplification of ionic fine-structure lines is unusual. During the course of development of a code designed to simulate gas under radiative-collisional equilibrium, the radiative transfer of roughly 500 ionic/atomic emission lines was treated using escape probabilities. Nearly all forbidden lines can become optically thick under extreme conditions, but the ³Pj = 1, 0 [Fe XI] 6.08 μm transition is the only line …

The Narrow-Line Region Of High-Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei, Beverley J. Wills, H. Netzer, M. S. Brotherton, Mingsheng Han, D. Wills, J. A. Baldwin, Gary J. Ferland, I. W. A. Browne

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We have made high signal-to-noise spectroscopic observations of seven radio-loud quasars with the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope and from the ground at McDonald Observatory and at Kitt Peak National Observatory. The resolution is 300-400 km s^-1 over the wavelength range 1000-8500 Å, enabling us to separate the broad and narrow components of the emission lines. This is the first study of the optical and UV narrow lines in such high-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGNs).

The most important and striking observational result is the relative weakness of the narrow ultraviolet lines, assuming that they have …