Testing the physical driver of Eigenvector 1 in Quasar Main Sequence

Swayamtrupta Panda, Bożena Czerny, Conor Wildy and Marzena Śniegowska

Quasars are among the most luminous sources characterized by their broad band spectra ranging from radio through optical to X-ray band, with numerous emission and absorption features. Using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Boroson & Green (1992) were able to show significant correlations between the measured parameters of quasars. Among the significant correlations projected, the leading component, related to Eigenvector 1 (EV1) was dominated by the anti-correlation between the FeII optical emission and [OIII] line where the EV1 alone contained 30% of the total variance. This introduced a way to define a quasar main sequence, in close analogy to the stellar main sequence in the Hertzsprung-Russel (HR) diagram (Sulentic et al. 2001). Which of the basic theoretically motivated parameters of an active nucleus: Eddington ratio, black hole mass, accretion rate, spin, or viewing angle, is the main driver behind the EV1 yet remains to be answered. We currently limited ourselves to the optical waveband, and concentrated on the theoretical modelling of the FeII to Hβ ratio, and test the hypothesis that the physical driver of EV1 is the maximum of the accretion disk temperature, reflected in the shape of the spectral energy distribution (SED). We performed computations of the Hβ and optical FeII emission for a broad range of SED peak position using CLOUDY photoionisation code. We assumed that both Hβ and FeII emission come from the Broad Line Region represented as a constant density cloud in a plane-parallel geometry. We compare the results for two different approaches: 1) considering a fixed bolometric luminosity for the SED; 2) considering L_bol/L_Edd=1.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 7, 298-303 (2018)

Download full article as PDF file: