Publication Title

Astrophysical Journal

Document Type

Article

Department or Program

Physics and Astronomy

Publication Date

6-2023

Abstract

Weak emission-line quasars (WLQs) are a subset of type 1 quasars that exhibit extremely weak Lyα + N v λ1240 and/or C iv λ1549 emission lines. We investigate the relationship between emission-line properties and accretion rate for a sample of 230 "ordinary"type 1 quasars and 18 WLQs at z < 0.5 and 1.5 < z < 3.5 that have rest-frame ultraviolet and optical spectral measurements. We apply a correction to the Hβ-based black hole mass (M BH) estimates of these quasars using the strength of the optical Fe ii emission. We confirm previous findings that WLQs' M BH values are overestimated by up to an order of magnitude using the traditional broad-emission-line region size-luminosity relation. With this M BH correction, we find a significant correlation between Hβ-based Eddington luminosity ratios and a combination of the rest-frame C iv equivalent width and C iv blueshift with respect to the systemic redshift. This correlation holds for both ordinary quasars and WLQs, which suggests that the two-dimensional C iv parameter space can serve as an indicator of accretion rate in all type 1 quasars across a wide range of spectral properties.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acd04d

Copyright Note

© 2023. The Authors. Published by the American Astronomical Society.

Required Publisher's Statement

Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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