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Register a new userThe MEXSAS2 Sample and the Ensemble X-ray Variability of Quasars
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We present the second Multi-Epoch X-ray Serendipitous AGN Sample (MEXSAS2), extracted from the 6th release of the XMM Serendipitous Source Catalogue (XMMSSC-DR6), cross-matched with Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalogues DR7Q and DR12Q. Our sample also includes the available measurements for masses, bolometric luminosities, and Eddington ratios. Analyses of the ensemble structure function and spectral variability are presented, together with their dependences on such parameters. We confirm a decrease of the structure function with the X-ray luminosity, and find a weak dependence on the black hole mass. We introduce a new spectral variability estimator, taking errors on both fluxes and spectral indices into account. We confirm an ensemble softer when brighter trend, with no dependence of such estimator on black hole mass, Eddington ratio, redshift, X-ray and bolometric luminosity.
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Most of the variability studies of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are based on ensemble analyses. Nevertheless, it is interesting to provide estimates of the individual variability properties of each AGN, in order to relate them with intrinsic physical quantities. A useful dataset is provided by the Catalina Surveys Data Release 2 (CSDR2), which encompasses almost a decade of photometric measurements of $sim500$ million objects repeatedly observed hundreds of times. We aim to investigate the individual optical variability properties of 795 AGNs originally included in the Multi-Epoch XMM Serendipitous AGN Sample 2 (MEXSAS2). Our goals consist in: (i) searching for correlations between variability and AGN physical quantities; (ii) extending our knowledge of the variability features of MEXSAS2 from the X-ray to the optical. We use the structure function (SF) to analyse AGN flux variations. We model the SF as a power-law, $text{SF}(tau)=A,(tau/tau_0)^gamma$, and we compute its variability parameters. We introduce the V-correction as a simple tool to correctly quantify the amount of variability in the rest frame of each source. We find a significant decrease of variability amplitude with increasing bolometric, optical and X-ray luminosity. We obtain the indication of an intrinsically weak positive correlation between variability amplitude and redshift, $z$. Variability amplitude is also positively correlated with $alpha_text{ox}$. The slope of the SF, $gamma$, is weakly correlated with the bolometric luminosity $L_text{bol}$ and/or with the black hole mass $M_text{BH}$. When comparing optical to X-ray variability properties, we find that X-ray variability amplitude is approximately the same for those AGNs with larger or smaller variability amplitude in the optical. On the contrary, AGNs with steeper SF in the optical do present steeper SF in the X-ray, and vice versa.
We investigated the rest-frame $approx$0.1-5 year X-ray variability properties of an unbiased and uniformly selected sample of 24 BAL and 35 mini-BAL quasars, making it the largest representative sample used to investigate such variability. We find that the distributions of X-ray variability amplitudes of these quasar populations are statistically similar to that of non-BAL, radio-quiet (typical) quasars.
Although absorbed quasars are extremely important for our understanding of the energetics of the Universe, the main physical parameters of their central engines are still poorly known. In this work we present and study a complete sample of 14 quasars (QSOs) that are absorbed in the X-rays (column density NH>4x10^21 cm-2 and X-ray luminosity L(2-10 keV)>10^44 ergs/s; XQSO2) belonging to the XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey (XBS). From the analysis of their ultraviolet-to-mid-infrared spectral energy distribution we can separate the nuclear emission from the host galaxy contribution, obtaining a measurement of the fundamental nuclear parameters, like the mass of the central supermassive black hole and the value of Eddington ratio, lambda_Edd. Comparing the properties of XQSO2s with those previously obtained for the X-ray unabsorbed QSOs in the XBS, we do not find any evidence that the two samples are drawn from different populations. In particular, the two samples span the same range in Eddington ratios, up to lambda_Edd=0.5; this implies that our XQSO2s populate the forbidden region in the so-called effective Eddington limit paradigm. A combination of low grain abundance, presence of stars inwards of the absorber, and/or anisotropy of the disk emission, can explain this result.
In this work we train three decision-tree based ensemble machine learning algorithms (Random Forest Classifier, Adaptive Boosting and Gradient Boosting Decision Tree respectively) to study quasar selection in the variable source catalog in SDSS Stripe 82. We build training and test samples (both containing 1:1 of quasars and stars) using the spectroscopic confirmed sources in SDSS DR14 (including 8330 quasars and 3966 stars). We find that, trained with variation parameters alone, all three models can select quasars with similarly and remarkably high precision and completeness ($sim$ 98.5% and 97.5%), even better than trained with SDSS colors alone ($sim$ 97.2% and 96.5%), consistent with previous studies. Through applying the trained models on the variable sources without spectroscopic identifications, we estimate the spectroscopically confirmed quasar sample in Stripe 82 variable source catalog is $sim$ 93% complete (95% for $m_i<19.0$). Using the Random Forest Classifier we derive the relative importance of the observational features utilized for classifications. We further show that even using one- or two-year time domain observations, variability-based quasar selection could still be highly efficient.
We present new Gemini/GMOS optical spectroscopy of 16 extreme variability quasars (EVQs) that dimmed by more than 1.5 mag in the $g$ band between the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Dark Energy Survey (DES) epochs (separated by a few years in the quasar rest frame). The quasar sample covers a redshift range of $0.5 < z < 2.1$. Nearly half of these EVQs brightened significantly (by more than 0.5 mag in the $g$ band) in a few years after reaching their previous faintest state, and some EVQs showed rapid (non-blazar) variations of greater than 1-2 mag on timescales of only months. Leveraging on the large dynamic range in continuum variability between the earlier SDSS and the new GMOS spectra, we explore the associated variations in the broad Mg II,$lambda2798$ line, whose variability properties have not been well studied before. The broad Mg II flux varies in the same direction as the continuum flux, albeit with a smaller amplitude, which indicates at least some portion of Mg II is reverberating to continuum changes. However, the width (FWHM) of Mg II does not vary accordingly as continuum changes for most objects in the sample, in contrast to the case of the broad Balmer lines. Using the width of broad Mg II to estimate the black hole mass therefore introduces a luminosity-dependent bias.
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