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We examine the low resolution UV spectra of the 37 quasars in HST Key Project to search for intrinsic Lyman absorption edge which may be a signature of thermal accretion disks. Only 28 QSOs have proper redshifts to place the region of interest in the G160L window.
We fit the $L_{\beta}$ with two gaussians to remove the line. We then avoid 20 and 50\AA~on the blue and red sides of 912\AA~in the rest frame, and take 80\AA~bins (rest frame) on both sides but further out for analysis. We compare the single power-law fitting (to the entire range across the edge), with the two power-law fitting to blue and red bands. We also measure the percentage drop of flux over the Lyman limit. There are 7 objects with intrinsically noisy spectra, which were presumably caused by intervening Lyman absorption systems. Applying the two methods on the rest 21 objects, we found {24\%} candidates to have possible rest frame Lyman limit absorption edges. Same analyses have also been performed on optical spectra of medium- to high-redshift QSOs from Lick Observatory and Hale Observatory. Similar results were also found.
