paper

Predicted FeII Emission-Line Strengths from Active Galactic Nuclei

arXiv:astro-ph/0206096 · doi:10.1086/345498

Abstract

We present theoretical FeII emission line strengths for physical conditions typical of Active Galactic Nuclei with Broad-Line Regions. The FeII line strengths were computed with a precise treatment of radiative transfer using extensive and accurate atomic data from the Iron Project. Excitation mechanisms for the FeII emission included continuum fluorescence, collisional excitation, self-fluorescence amoung the FeII transitions, and fluorescent excitation by Lyman-alpha and Lyman-beta. A large FeII atomic model consisting of 827 fine structure levels (including states to E ~ 15 eV) was used to predict fluxes for approximately 23,000 FeII transitions, covering most of the UV, optical, and IR wavelengths of astrophysical interest. Spectral synthesis for wavelengths from 1600 Angstroms to 1.2 microns is presented. Applications of present theoretical templates to the analysis of observations are described. In particular, we discuss recent observations of near-IR FeII lines in the 8500 Angstrom -- 1 micron region which are predicted by the Lyman-alpha fluorescence mechanism. We also compare our UV spectral synthesis with an empirical iron template for the prototypical, narrow-line Seyfert galaxy I Zw 1. The theoretical FeII template presented in this work should also applicable to a variety of objects with FeII spectra formed under similar excitation conditions, such as supernovae and symbiotic stars.

33 pages, 15 postscript figures

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