# HOW SATURATED ARE ABSORPTION LINES IN THE BROAD ABSORPTION LINE QUASAR PG 1411+442 ?

## 1 INTRODUCTION

About 10% of quasars (QSO) found in the optical flux-limited samples exhibit broad absorption lines (BAL), resonance line absorption troughs extending $``$ 0.1c to the blue of the emission line centers (Weymann et al. 1991). However, Goodrich (1997) and Krolik & Voit (1998) argued that the true fraction of BAL QSO can be as high as $`>30`$% considering attenuation of the light or a non-spherical distribution of continuum emission. Based on the similarity of emission line properties, it is generally thought that BAL regions exist in all quasars, but occupy only a fraction of the solid angle (e.g., Weymann et al. 1991). Thus a BAL region is an important part of every QSO’s structure.

The absorption line properties of BAL QSO have been intensively studied, however, results on the nature of the absorbing material from the UV absorption lines alone are rather controversial. All earlier results indicated low column densities of about an equivalent $`N_H`$ density around 10<sup>20∼21</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> on the assumption that the absorption is not too optically thick, but metal abundances far higher than the solar values are required (Korista et al. 1996; Turnshek et al. 1996; Hamann 1996). However, recent results show that the structure of the absorbing material is rather complicated and seriously saturated in some velocity range in PG 0946+301 (Arav et al. 1998). The total column density could be much larger. One major difficulty, however, is the lack of an independent measurement of the covering factor.

In the soft X-ray band, BAL QSO are notorious for their weakness (Green et al. 1995, Green & Mathur 1996). It was argued that the BAL QSO are not intrinsically X-ray weak, but heavily absorbed in the soft band. Great similarity of the emission line spectra in BAL and non-BAL QSO indicates that the BLR clouds have seen a similar ionizing (UV to X-ray) continuum in both type of QSO (Weymann et al. 1991).

Heavy absorption has been found in the one of two ROSAT detected BAL QSO. Green & Mathur (1996) showed that the spectrum of 1246-057 is absorbed by an intrinsic column of $``$1.2$`\times `$10<sup>23</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>. A similar column density was found in the ASCA spectrum of PHL 5200 (Mathur et al. 1996). More BAL QSO still remain to be discovered in the X-ray band. From the ROSAT non-detection, Green & Mathur (1996) derived a lower limit for the absorption column densities of $``$ 10<sup>23</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> for these objects if the intrinsic X-ray emission is similar to other quasars. A similar conclusion has been reached by Gallagher et al. (1999). Brinkmann et al. (1999) analyzed the ASCA spectra of three BAL QSO; only the brightest, low redshift (z=0.0896, Marziani et al. 1996) BAL QSO PG 1411+442 has been detected with a column density of $``$2 10<sup>23</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>.

At these column densities, photons below 1 keV are completely absorbed. Any soft X-ray emission from a BAL QSO must be either scattered light or the light leaking from a partially covering absorber. Therefore, the measurement of the unabsorbed component in soft X-rays and the absorbed ones in the hard X-ray band will enable us to determine the fraction of light scattered or leaked, thus providing an independent measurement of the effective covering factor of absorbing material. Both, scattered light and absorbed hard X-rays were detected in the nearby bright BAL QSO PG 1411+442 (Brinkmann et al. 1999).

In this Letter, we make a further analysis of the broad band X-ray spectrum and the UV absorption line spectrum from HST. We will show that the UV absorption lines are completely saturated in the deepest part of the absorption trough.

## 2  X-RAY ABSORPTION AND SCATTERING

Brinkmann et al. (1999) found that the combined ROSAT and ASCA spectrum can be well fitted by a heavily absorbed power law at high energies plus an unabsorbed power law at low energy with a much steeper spectrum. They noticed that the steepness of the power law in the soft band is consistent with the H$`\beta `$ width versus soft X-ray spectral index correlation found for a sample of QSOs (Laor et al. 1997, Wang et al. 1996), and interpreted this component as scattered or leaked nuclear light. By comparing the normalizations at 1 keV, they estimated the fraction of this soft component to the primary component to be $``$ 5 per cent. Here we re-fit the broad band X-ray spectrum to determine more consistently the fraction of the scattered or leaked light.

As the ASCA and ROSAT spectra in the overlapping energy range are consistent with each other, they were fitted simultaneously (see Brinkmann et al. 1999). Since the X-ray spectra at low energies are usually much steeper due to a soft excess, the X-ray spectrum is modeled as a broken power law with a low energy index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sx}`$ and a high energy index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{hx}`$, with partially covering absorption. The index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{hx}`$ is fixed to 2.0, which is typical for radio-quiet QSOs. The model can fit the data very well ($`\chi ^2=74`$ for 79 degrees of freedom, see also Figure 1a). The results are presented in Table 1. Figure 2 shows the 68% and 90% confidence contours for $`N_H^{(intrin)}`$ versus the covering factor. Both covering factor and the absorption column density are dependent on the value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{hx}`$ and the break energy. For a reasonable range $`1.8<\mathrm{\Gamma }_{hx}<2.2`$, the best fit covering factor is around 0.95 to 0.97. The fitted covering factor also depends on the break energy. A lower break energy yields a slightly larger covering factor and a higher break energy results in a somewhat lower covering factor. Considering these uncertainties, it is likely that the covering factor is in the range 0.94-0.97.

Since PG 1411+442 is the least luminous BAL QSO, there is some concern that the soft X-ray emission might be due to thermal emission from hot gas in the host galaxy. A model consisting of an absorbed power-law plus thermal emission (Raymond-Smith model) was fitted to the spectra. The fit is statistically poor ( $`\chi ^2`$=132 for 78 d.o.f.) and shows systematic deviations in the residuals (Figure 1b). Furthermore, the fit yields a very flat photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.06_{0.15}^{+0.20}`$. Therefore, thermal emission cannot be the source for the soft excess.

As warm absorption can also produce a structure similar to a soft excess, we fit the spectrum with a power-law absorbed by ionized absorption material ( Zdziarski et al. 1995). The fit is only acceptable at a probability of 3% ($`\chi ^2`$=104 for 78 d.o.f.) with systematic deviations between 0.3 and 1.2 keV (see Figure 1c). Thus a warm absorber cannot successfully reproduce the observed spectrum either. In fact, when a partially covered warm absorption model applied, the soft X-ray emission almost entirely come from the leaked component and the X-ray ionization parameter ($`U_x`$, see Netzer 1996 for definition) is constrainted to be 0.05$`{}_{}{}^{+0.04}{}_{0.05}{}^{}`$.

## 3 THE UV ABSORPTION LINE TROUGHS

PG 1411+442 was observed by HST with GHRS centered at 130nm and 190nm with a spectral resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda /\lambda =3000`$ (Corbin & Boroson 1996). We retrieved the calibrated files from the HST data archive to obtain the wavelength, absolute flux, error flag, and the photon noise vector. We have averaged all spectra. Since the blue wings of the emission lines Ly$`\alpha `$, CIV and NV are strongly absorbed, it is impossible to determine their emission line profile. CIII\]$`\lambda `$1909 is the only moderately strong line which is not affected by absorption in the HST spectrum, and is used to construct a template model for emission line profiles. We fitted the line with two gaussians over a range avoiding the SiIII\] contamination and assumed that the other lines also consist of the same two gaussian components but with different normalizations. To test this, we have fitted this model to the HeII and the NV, CIV red wings. Reasonable good fits were obtained and normalizations are determined for each line. We have taken into account the doublet nature of CIV and NV line. The double ratios were fixed to the ratio of their statistical weights. Since the red wing of $`Ly\alpha `$ is also affected by the NV absorption line, the emission line profiles are modeled using the scaled exact model for CIV line profile.

Figure 3 shows the ratio of the data to a model consisting of emission lines and a continuum. The absorption line profiles are similar for CIV, Ly$`\alpha `$ and NV. The difference in the apparent broadness of NV, CIV, and Ly$`\alpha `$ of the component B is due to the doublet nature of CIV and NV, and their different separations. The narrow (FWHM $``$ 300 km sec<sup>-1</sup>) absorption line at zero velocity which is seen strongest in Ly$`\alpha `$ and is also visible in CIV and SiIV as doublets. The exact profile of component A in NV is uncertain due to the fact that the Ly$`\alpha `$ profile cannot be well defined. A more detailed analysis of the absorption line structures is beyond the scope of this paper.

The absorption troughs of the component B in CIV and NV are box-shaped and have a none-zero flux of $``$ 5-6 per cent of the unabsorbed flux at the bottom. This value is higher than the expected Grating-scattered light at 1-2% level in the GHRS spectrum (Crenshaw et al. 1998). However, the fraction of light at the bottom of the troughs is coincident with the 3-5 per cent of scattered or leaked light in the soft X-ray band.

## 4 DISCUSSION

We have shown that in PG 1411+442 unabsorbed X-rays occur at a 3-5 per cent level, which is coincident with the fraction of the residual flux in the bottom of the absorption line troughs. This can be described by either a partial coverage or a simple scattering model. In either case, the absorption lines at the bottom of troughs can quite well be black saturated.

The idea that scattered light fills in the absorption line troughs in BAL QSOs was actually proposed some years ago based on the results of spectropolarimetric observations. Cohen et al. (1995) and Ogle (1997) showed that the polarization at the bottom of the troughs is much higher than the continuum level polarization. Their finding demonstrates that a considerable fraction of the flux at the bottom of the troughs is from scattered photons. As the polarization degree is strongly dependent on the detailed geometry of the scatterer as well as on the continuum emission pattern, it is impossible to determine the amount of total scattered light from the polarized light itself and the degree of saturation of the line cannot be estimated. Here we have illustrated that because of the completely scattered or leaked nature of the soft X-rays, broad band X-ray observations can provide a way to estimate this fraction. A combination of polarization and X-ray measurements will allow to constrain the geometry of the scatterer.

Ogle et al. (1997) showed that,in general, the absorbing medium also partially covers the scattering medium. This implies that the scattered light is also partially absorbed. We wish to point out that the upper limit ( 3.3$`\times 10^{20}`$ cm<sup>-2</sup>) of column density derived for the intrinsic soft X-ray absorption might still be consistent with their results. Future UV spectro-polarimetric observations of PG 1411+442 will allow to address this question. The remarkable good agreement between the ROSAT and ASCA spectrum at the overlapping region suggests that the soft X-ray emission did not change between the two epochs separated by 6 years. This can be naturally explained in a scattering model.

On the other hand, partial covering is strongly suggested from optical and UV observations. For intrinsic absorber with relatively narrow UV line profiles, there is good evidence that the coverage of the continuum source is partial, velocity dependent, and may also be a function of ionization stage (Barlow et al. 1997) . There is suspicion that the same complications apply to the BAL lines (Arav 1997). A constant soft X-ray flux is possibly a drawback for the partial covering model as the continuum of PG 1411+442 is variable (Giveon et al. 1999). Because of lacking simultaneous hard X-ray observation during the ROSAT observation, we are unable to rule out the partial covering model. Future observations of this object covering both, soft and hard X-rays, will allow to discriminate the two models and to precisely estimate the fraction of unabsorbed X-ray light.

The X-ray properties of objects with intrinsically relatively narrow absorption lines are completely different from those of BAL QSOs. Warm absorption is seen in the former, while X-rays are extremely weak in the BAL QSOs, perhaps due to strong absorption. Recently, Wang et al. (1999) found that the soft X-ray emission is very weak in the luminous Seyfert 1 galaxy PG 1126-041 which shows UV absorption lines only slightly narrower than typical BAL lines. They further demonstrated that the X-ray weakness can be fully explained by warm absorption with lower ionization parameter and larger column density than found in typical Seyfert 1 galaxies. The absorbing column density deduced for PG 1411+442 is several times larger than that for PG 1126-041, while the ionization parameter seems also lower for the former than for the latter (see section 2). These results indicates that there is a continuous changes of the physical parameters with width of absorption line, i.e., an increase in column density, as well as a decrease in the ionization parameter, with increasing line width. In fact, the two ASCA detected BAL QSOs, PHL 5200 (Mathur et al. 1996) and PG 1411+442 show a line width narrower than more typical BAL QSOs. Future observation with more sensitive instruments will allow to address this issue.

We are grateful to the referee for useful suggestions which improved the presentation of this paper. TW acknowledges support at RIKEN by a Science and Technology Agency fellowship. WB thanks the Cosmic Radiation Laboratory for hospitality where part of the research was done in the framework of the MPG-RIKEN exchange program. This work is partly supported by Pandeng Program of CSC and Chinese NSF.