We have investigated the strength of ultraviolet Fe II emission from quasars within the environments of Large Quasar Groups (LQGs) in comparison with quasars elsewhere, for 1.1 <= <z_LQG> <= 1.7, using the DR7QSO catalogue of the Sloan Digital Sky Su
rvey. We use the Weymann et al. W2400 equivalent width, defined between the rest-frame continuum-windows 2240-2255 and 2665-2695 Ang., as the measure of the UV Fe II emission. We find a significant shift of the W2400 distribution to higher values for quasars within LQGs, predominantly for those LQGs with 1.1 <= <z_LQG> <= 1.5. There is a tentative indication that the shift to higher values increases with the quasar i magnitude. We find evidence that within LQGs the ultrastrong emitters with W2400 >= 45 Ang. (more precisely, ultrastrong-plus with W2400 >= 44 Ang.) have preferred nearest-neighbour separations of ~ 30-50 Mpc to the adjacent quasar of any W2400 strength. No such effect is seen for the ultrastrong emitters that are not in LQGs. The possibilities for increasing the strength of the Fe II emission appear to be iron abundance, Ly-alpha fluorescence, and microturbulence, and probably all of these operate. The dense environment of the LQGs may have led to an increased rate of star formation and an enhanced abundance of iron in the nuclei of galaxies. Similarly the dense environment may have led to more active blackholes and increased Ly-alpha fluorescence. The preferred nearest-neighbour separation for the stronger emitters would appear to suggest a dynamical component, such as microturbulence. In one particular LQG, the Huge-LQG (the largest structure known in the early universe), six of the seven strongest emitters very obviously form three pairings within the total of 73 members.
A Large Quasar Group (LQG) of particularly large size and high membership has been identified in the DR7QSO catalogue of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It has characteristic size (volume^1/3) ~ 500 Mpc (proper size, present epoch), longest dimension ~
1240 Mpc, membership of 73 quasars, and mean redshift <z> = 1.27. In terms of both size and membership it is the most extreme LQG found in the DR7QSO catalogue for the redshift range 1.0 <= z <= 1.8 of our current investigation. Its location on the sky is ~ 8.8 deg north (~ 615 Mpc projected) of the Clowes & Campusano LQG at the same redshift, <z> = 1.28, which is itself one of the more extreme examples. Their boundaries approach to within ~ 2 deg (~ 140 Mpc projected). This new, huge LQG appears to be the largest structure currently known in the early universe. Its size suggests incompatibility with the Yadav et al. scale of homogeneity for the concordance cosmology, and thus challenges the assumption of the cosmological principle.
