Physics of shock waves and high-temperature hydrodynamic phenomena - Ya.B. Zeldovich and Yu.P. Raizer (translated from the Russian and then edited by Wallace D. Hayes and Ronald F. Probstein); Dover Publications, New York, 2002, 944 pp., $34.

Primordial nucleosynthesis: From precision cosmology to fundamental physics

Using a sample of ~30,000 quasars from the 7th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we explore the range of properties exhibited by high-ionization, broad emission lines, such as C IV λ1549. Specifically, we investigate the anti-correlation between continuum luminosity and emission-line equivalent width (the Baldwin Effect (BEff)) and the blueshifting of the high-ionization emission lines with respect to low-ionization emission lines. Employing improved redshift determinations from Hewett & Wild, the blueshift of the C IV emission line is found to be nearly ubiquitous, with a mean shift of ~810 km s–1 for radio-quiet (RQ) quasars and ~360 km s–1 for radio-loud (RL) quasars. The BEff is present in both RQ and RL samples. We consider these phenomena within the context of an accretion disk-wind model that is modulated by the nonlinear correlation between ultraviolet and X-ray continuum luminosity. Composite spectra are constructed as a function of C IV emission-line properties in an attempt to reveal empirical relationships between different line species and the continuum. Within a two-component disk+wind model of the broad emission-line region (BELR), where the wind filters the continuum seen by the disk component, we find that RL quasars are consistent with being dominated by the disk component, while broad absorption line quasars are consistent with being dominated by the wind component. Some RQ objects have emission-line features similar to RL quasars; they may simply have insufficient black hole (BH) spin to form radio jets. Our results suggest that there could be significant systematic errors in the determination of L bol and BH mass that make it difficult to place these findings in a more physical context. However, it is possible to classify quasars in a paradigm where the diversity of BELR parameters is due to differences in an accretion disk wind between quasars (and over time); these differences are underlain primarily by the spectral energy distribution, which ultimately must be tied to BH mass and accretion rate.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-6256/141/5/167/pdf

Unification of luminous type 1 quasars through c iv emission

Observations of helium and hydrogen emission lines from metal-poor extragalactic H II regions, combined with estimates of metallicity, provide an independent method for determining the primordial helium abundance, Yp. Traditionally, the emission lines employed are in the visible wavelength range, and the number of suitable lines is limited. Furthermore, when using these lines, large systematic uncertainties in helium abundance determinations arise due to the degeneracy of physical parameters, such as temperature and density. Recently, Izotov, Thuan, & Guseva (2014) have pioneered adding the He I λ10830 infrared emission line in helium abundance determinations. The strong electron density dependence of He I λ10830 makes it ideal for better constraining density, potentially breaking the degeneracy with temperature. We revisit our analysis of the dataset published by Izotov, Thuan, & Stasianska (2007) and incorporate the newly available observations of He I λ10830 by scaling them using the observed-to-theoretical Paschen-gamma ratio. The solutions are better constrained, in particular for electron density, temperature, and the neutral hydrogen fraction, improving the model fit to data, with the result that more spectra now pass screening for quality and reliability, in addition to a standard 95% confidence level cut. Furthermore, the addition of He I λ10830 decreases the uncertainty on the helium abundance for all galaxies, with reductions in the uncertainty ranging from 10–80%. Overall, we find a reduction in the uncertainty on Yp by over 50%. From a regression to zero metallicity, we determine Yp = 0.2449 ± 0.0040, consistent with the BBN result, Yp = 0.2470 ± 0.0002, based on the Planck determination of the baryon density. The dramatic improvement in the uncertainty from incorporating He I λ10830 strongly supports the case for simultaneous (thus not requiring scaling) observations of visible and infrared helium emission line spectra.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2015/07/011/pdf

The effects of He I λ10830 on helium abundance determinations

We report the discovery of deuterium absorption in the very metal-poor ([Fe/H] = –2.88) damped Lyα system at z_abs = 3.06726 toward the QSO SDSS J1358+6522. On the basis of 13 resolved D I absorption lines and the damping wings of the H I Lyα transition, we have obtained a new, precise measure of the primordial abundance of deuterium. Furthermore, to bolster the present statistics of precision D/H measures, we have reanalyzed all of the known deuterium absorption-line systems that satisfy a set of strict criteria. We have adopted a blind analysis strategy (to remove human bias) and developed a software package that is specifically designed for precision D/H abundance measurements. For this reanalyzed sample of systems, we obtain a weighted mean of (D/H)_p = (2.53 ± 0.04) × 10^–5, corresponding to a universal baryon density 100 Ω_b, 0 h^2 = 2.202 ± 0.046 for the standard model of big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). By combining our measure of (D/H)p with observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), we derive the effective number of light fermion species, N eff = 3.28 ± 0.28. We therefore rule out the existence of an additional (sterile) neutrino (i.e., N_eff = 4.046) at 99.3% confidence (2.7σ), provided that the values of N eff and of the baryon-to-photon ratio (η_10) did not change between BBN and recombination. We also place a strong bound on the neutrino degeneracy parameter, independent of the 4He primordial mass fraction, Y P: ξD = +0.05 ± 0.13 based only on the CMB+(D/H)_p observations. Combining this value of ξD with the current best literature measure of Y P, we find a 2σ upper bound on the neutrino degeneracy parameter, |ξ| ≤ +0.062.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/781/1/31/pdf

Precision measures of the primordial abundance of deuterium

We describe the 2017 release of the spectral synthesis code Cloudy , summa- rizing the many improvements to the scope and accuracy of the physics which have been made since the previous release. Exporting the atomic data into external data files has enabled many new large datasets to be incorporated into the code. The use of the complete datasets is not realistic for most calculations, so we describe the lim- ited subset of data used by default, which predicts significantly more lines than the previous release of Cloudy . This version is nevertheless faster than the previous release, as a result of code optimizations. We give examples of the accuracy limits using small models, and the performance requirements of large complete models. We summarize several advances in the H- and He-like iso-electronic sequences and use our complete collisional-radiative models to establish the densities where the coronal and local thermodynamic equilibrium approximations work.

The 2017 release of CLOUDY

We investigate consequences of the discovery that Fe II emission in quasars, one of the spectroscopic signatures of "Eigenvector 1," may originate in infalling clouds. Eigenvector 1 correlates with the Eddington ratio L/L(Edd) so that Fe II/H beta increases as L/L(Edd) increases. We show that the " force multiplier," the ratio of gas opacity to electron scattering opacity, is similar to 10(3)-10(4) in Fe II-emitting gas. Such gas would be accelerated away from the central object if the radiation force is able to act on the entire cloud. As had previously been deduced, infall requires that the clouds have large column densities so that a substantial amount of shielded gas is present. The critical column density required for infall to occur depends on L/L(Edd), establishing a link between Eigenvector 1 and the Fe II/H beta ratio. We see predominantly the shielded face of the infalling clouds rather than the symmetric distribution of emitters that has been assumed. The Fe II spectrum emitted by the shielded face is in good agreement with observations thus solving several long-standing mysteries in quasar emission lines.

Implications of Infalling Fe II-Emitting Clouds in Active Galactic Nuclei: Anisotropic Properties

We calculate the He I case B recombination cascade spectrum using improved radiative and collisional data. We present new emissivities over a range of electron temperatures and densities. The differences between our results and the current standard are large enough to have a significant effect not only on the interpretation of observed spectra of a wide variety of objects, but also on determinations of the primordial helium abundance.

/pdf/theoretical-he-i-emissivities-in-the-case-b-approximation-20v1dzqtp0.pdf

Theoretical He I Emissivities in the Case B Approximation

We apply a recently developed theoretical model of helium emission to observations of both the Orion Nebula and a sample of extragalactic H II regions. In the Orion analysis, we eliminate some weak and blended lines and compare theory and observation for our reduced line list. With our best theoretical model we find an average difference between theoretical and observed intensities Ipred/Iobs ? 1 = 6.5%. We argue that both the red and blue ends of the spectrum may have been inadequately corrected for reddening. For the 22 highest quality lines, with 3499 ? ? ? ? 6678 ?, our best model predicts observations to an average of 3.8%. We also perform an analysis of the reported observational errors and conclude that they have been underestimated. In the extragalactic analysis, we demonstrate the likelihood of a large systematic error in the reported data and discuss possible causes. This systematic error is at least as large as the errors associated with nearly all attempts to calculate the primordial helium abundance from such observations. Our Orion analysis suggests that the problem does not lie in the theoretical models. We demonstrate a correlation between equivalent width and apparent helium abundance of lines from extragalactic sources that is most likely due to underlying stellar absorption. Finally, we present fits to collisionless case B He I emissivities as well as the relative contributions due to collisional excitations out of the metastable 2s 3S term.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/510880/pdf

He I Emission in the Orion Nebula and Implications for Primordial Helium Abundance

We update our prior work on the case B collisional-recombination spectrum of He I to incorporate ab initio photoionization cross-sections. This large set of accurate, self-consistent cross-sections represents a significant improvement in He I emissivity calculations because it largely obviates the piecemeal nature that has marked all modern works. A second, more recent set of ab initio cross-sections is also available, but we show that those are less consistent with bound–bound transition probabilities than our adopted set. We compare our new effective recombination coefficients with our prior work and our new emissivities with those by other researchers, and we conclude with brief remarks on the effects of the present work on the He I error budget. Our calculations cover temperatures 5000 ≤ Te ≤ 25 000 K and densities 10 1 ≤ ne ≤ 10 14 cm −3 . Full results are available online (see Supporting Information).

/pdf/improved-he-i-emissivities-in-the-case-b-approximation-418t8hrcfu.pdf

R. L. Porter

Papers

The 2017 release of CLOUDY

Implications of Infalling Fe II-Emitting Clouds in Active Galactic Nuclei: Anisotropic Properties

Theoretical He I Emissivities in the Case B Approximation

He I Emission in the Orion Nebula and Implications for Primordial Helium Abundance

Improved He I Emissivities in the Case B Approximation