Size and Structure of the Narrow-Line Region of Quasars

By N. Bennert, Heino Falcke, H. Schulz, A. S. Wilson, B. Wills. 2002

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We have observed the narrow-line regions (NLRs) of the seven brightest radio-quiet Palomar-Green (or Bright Quasar Survey) quasars (z < 0.5) with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Linear-ramp filters were used to image the [O III] λ5007 line emission with 0.″0455-0.″1 pixel resolution. We find that the NLRs are very compact with typical extents of 2''-4''. Two quasars show compact filamentary structures similar to Seyfert NLRs. They may be related to radio outflows. Most interestingly, when including a sample of Seyfert galaxies observed with HST, we tentatively find that the size of the NLR is proportional to the square root of the [O III] luminosity. This is comparable to the scaling found for the size of the broad-line region with continuum luminosity, which has been interpreted in terms of a constant photoionization parameter. The relation determined here connects the NLR of radio-quiet quasars and Seyfert galaxies over 3 orders of magnitude in [O III] luminosity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/83de6e0a828b28dc7bfa0028d365fa06f0c29786

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Observations of feedback from radio-quiet quasars - I. Extents and morphologies of ionized gas nebulae (2013, background): “HST narrow-band imaging campaigns (Schmitt et al. 2003; Bennert et al. 2002) are included in the figure (represented by gray symbols) but are not used in any quantitative measurements, because they are shallower than IFU and long-slit spectroscopy by 1–2 orders of magnitude and thus do not reach…”
Properties of Lyα emitters around the radio galaxy MRC 0316 257 (2005, unknown): “1000–2000 km s−1, e.g. Bennert et al., 2002) QSOs.”
THE DISCOVERY OF THE FIRST “CHANGING LOOK” QUASAR: NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE PHYSICS AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2014, background): “The NLR is larger and may extend dozens to thousands of parsecs depending on the luminosity and redshift of a quasar (e.g., Bennert et al. 2002; Yonehara 2006; Oh et al. 2013), where the limiting size of the NLR may be set by the gas available for ionization (Hainline et al. 2013, 2014).”
An Optical Spectroscopic Atlas of Low-Redshift Active Galactic Nuclei (2003, background): “…Sulentic, Marziani, & Dultzin-Hacyan 2000a); 2. the narrow-line region (NLR), which has been resolved in the nearest AGN but whose structure and evolution remain unclear for the vast majority of luminous Seyfert 1 galaxies and for all quasars (see, e.g., Bennert et al. 2002; Zamanov et al. 2002).”
THE MULTIPHASE STRUCTURE AND POWER SOURCES OF GALACTIC WINDS IN MAJOR MERGERS (2013, background): “They are in fact radio-quiet QSOs, whose narrow line region sizes can reach several kpc or more (Bennert et al. 2002; Greene et al. 2011).”
A Hubble Space Telescope Survey of Extended [O III] λ5007 Å Emission in a Far-Infrared-Selected Sample of Seyfert Galaxies: Results (2003, methodology): “Comparison of Seyferts and QSO’s Compared with the results obtained by Bennert et al. (2002) using Seyfert 2’s and QSO’s, our data indicate a significantly flatter slope for the size-luminosity relation.”
Kiloparsec-scale outflows are prevalent among luminous AGN: outflows and feedback in the context of the overall AGN population (2014, methodology): “This is consistent with other studies that have shown that luminous AGN can have emission-line regions up to tens of kiloparsecsin size (e.g., Bennert et al. 2002; Humphrey et al. 2010; Greenet al. 2011; Schirmer et al. 2013; Harrison et al. 2012; Husemann etal.”
Size and properties of the narrow-line region in Seyfert-1 galaxies from spatially-resolved optical spectroscopy (2006, background): “A meaningful measure of the NLR size is of great importance to determine the slope, and thus the origin, of the NLR size-luminosity relation (Bennert et al., 2002).”
A New Sample of Low-Mass Black Holes in Active Galaxies (2007, background): “If observed correlations between NLR size and AGN luminosity (e.g., Bennert et al. 2002; Schmitt et al. 2003) are extrapolated to the highest luminosities, then one would predict unbound nebulosities; Netzer et al. (2004) suppose that the NLRs in these systems grew so large that they were no longer…”
FEEDBACK IN LUMINOUS OBSCURED QUASARS (2011, methodology): “Obscuration, Ionization, and Excitation NLR sizes have been measured from narrow-band imaging (Mulchaey et al. 1996a; Bennert et al. 2002; Schmitt et al. 2003) and from long-slit spectroscopy (e.g., Unger et al. 1987; Fraquelli et al. 2003; Bennert et al. 2006).”