AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 18 X-ray and UV Observations of AGN, Including AGN Outflows
Poster, Monday, 9:20am-7:00pm, January 9, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[18.09] Extracting the Physical Conditions, Abundances, and Geometric Structure of AGN Outflows from High Resolution UV Spectra: VLT/UVES Observations of the HDFS Target QSO J2233-606

J.R. Gabel, N. Arav (CASA/CU), T.-S. Kim (AIP)

We present detailed results on the physical conditions, geometric structure, and chemical abundances in the AGN outflow systems (vout~-5000 - -3800 km s-1) detected in the central HDFS quasar, QSO J2233-606, based on analysis of a high S/N VLT/UVES spectrum. We globally fit all intrinsic UV absorption lines detected in the VLT spectrum to extract velocity-dependent covering factors and optical depths from the observed absorption troughs. This gives the required constraints to treat the complex geometric coverage of the background AGN emission sources and reveals: (1) narrow kinematic substructure in the column density profiles, indicating the relatively broad absorption is comprised of a series of narrower components; (2) the continuum source is fully (or nearly so) occulted by the absorbers at all velocities, while the BLR emission exhibits systematically smaller coverage fraction (~0 - 60% ); and (3) an increase in covering factor in higher velocity components. We employ velocity-dependent photoionization modeling, which allows a full quantitative solution to the C, N, and O abundances, as well as the velocity resolved ionization parameter and total outflow column density. The outflow systems have supersolar abundances, with [C/H] and [O/H] ~0.5 -- 0.6, and [N/H] ~ 1.2, consistent with the Z2 scaling expected from secondary nucleosynthesis processes; independent fits to each component give consistent results. We explore the implications of these results for the kinematic-geometric-ionization structure and evolution of the outflow.


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