Statistical Properties of Multi-epoch Spectral Variability of SDSS Stripe82 Quasars

Abstract

We investigate the UV-optical (longward of Ly$\alpha$ 1216Å) spectral variability of nearly 9000 quasars ($0<z<4$) using multi-epoch photometric data within the SDSS Stripe 82 region. The regression slope in the flux-flux space of a quasar light curve directly measures the color of the flux difference spectrum, then the spectral shape of the flux difference spectra can be derived by taking a careful look at the redshift dependence of the regression slopes. First, we confirm that the observed quasar spectrum becomes bluer when the quasar becomes brighter. We infer the spectral index of the composite difference spectrum as ${\alpha }_{\nu }^{\text{dif}}\sim +1/3$ (in the form of $f_{\nu }\propto {\nu }^{{\alpha }_{\nu }}$), which is significantly bluer than that of the composite spectrum ${\alpha }_{\nu }^{\text{com}}\sim -0.5$. We also show that the continuum variability cannot be explained by the accretion disk models with varying mass accretion rate. Second, we examine the effects of broad emission line variability on the color-redshift space. The variability of the "Small Blue Bump" is extensively discussed. We show that the low-ionization lines of MgII and FeII are less variable compared to Balmer emission lines and high-ionization lines, and the Balmer continuum is the dominant variable source around $\sim 3000$Å. These results are compared with previous studies, and the physical mechanisms of the variability of the continuum and emission lines are discussed.

20 pages, 17 figures and 2 tables, matches version published in ApJ with a typo corrected in caption of Figure 14 (α_ν---> α_λ)

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