Paola Rodriguez Hidalgo

Variability in quasar broad absorption line outflows II. Multi-epoch monitoring of SiIV and CIV BAL variability

Broad absorption lines (BALs) in quasar spectra indicate high-velocity outflows that may be present in all quasars and could be an important contributor to feedback to their host galaxies. Variability studies of BALs help illuminate the structure, evolution, and basic physical properties of the outflows. Here we present further results from an ongoing BAL monitoring campaign of a sample of 24 luminous quasars at redshifts 1.2 -20 000 km/s, 47 per cent of quasars exhibited SiIV variability while 31 per cent exhibited CIV variability. Furthermore, ~50 per cent of the variable SiIV regions did not have corresponding CIV variability at the same velocities. When both CIV and SiIV varied, those changes always occurred in the same sense (either getting weaker or stronger). We also include our full data set so far in this paper, which includes up to 10 epochs of data per quasar. The multi-epoch data show that the BAL changes were not generally monotonic across the full ~5 to ~8 yr time span of our observations, suggesting that the characteristic time-scale for significant line variations, and (perhaps) for structural changes in the outflows, is less than a few years. Coordinated variabilities between absorption regions at different velocities in individual quasars seems to favor changing ionization of the outflowing gas as the cause of the observed BAL variability. However, variability in limited portions of broad troughs fits naturally in a scenario where movements of individual clouds, or substructures in the flow, across our lines-of-sight cause the absorption to vary. The actual situation may be a complex mixture of changing ionization and cloud movements.

Evolution of the population of very strong Mg ii absorbers

We present a study of the evolution of several classes of Mg ii absorbers, and their corresponding Fe ii absorption, over a large fraction of cosmic history: 2.3–8.7 Gyr from the big bang. Our sample consists of 87 strong ( A) Mg ii absorbers, with redshifts 0.2 < z < 2.5, measured in 81 quasar spectra obtained from the Very Large Telescope/Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph archives of high-resolution spectra (R ∼ 45 000). No evolutionary trend in is found for moderately strong Mg ii absorbers ( A). However, at lower redshifts we find an absence of very strong Mg ii absorbers (those with  A) with small ratios of equivalent widths of Fe ii to Mg ii. At high redshifts, very strong Mg ii absorbers with both small and large values are present. We compare our findings to a sample of 100 weak Mg ii absorbers ( A) found in the same quasar spectra by Narayanan et al. The main effect driving the evolution of very strong Mg ii systems is the difference between the kinematic profiles at low and high redshift. At high redshift, we observe that, among the very strong Mg ii absorbers, all of the systems with small ratios of have relatively large velocity spreads, resulting in less saturated profiles. At low redshift, such kinematically spread systems are absent, and both Fe ii and Mg ii are saturated, leading to values that are all close to 1. The high redshift, small systems could correspond to sub-damped Lyman α systems, many of which have large velocity spreads and are possibly linked to superwinds in star-forming galaxies. In addition to the change in saturation due to kinematic evolution, the smaller values could be due to a lower abundance of Fe at high redshifts, which would indicate relatively early stages of star formation in those environments.