Exploratory Study of the Transverse Proximity Effect around BAL Quasars

Abstract

Abstract We aim to determine why there exists anisotropic H i absorption around quasars; i.e., the environments around quasars are highly biased toward producing strong H i absorption in the transverse direction while there exists a significant deficit of H i absorption within a few megaparsecs of quasars along the line of sight. The most plausible explanation for this opposite trend is that the transverse direction is shielded from quasar UV radiation by dust torus. However, a critical weakness of this explanation is that we do not have any information on the inclination angle of our sightline relative to the torus. In this study, we examine environments of quasars with broad-absorption troughs in their spectra (i.e., BAL quasars) because it is widely believed that BAL troughs are observed if the central continuum is viewed from the side through their powerful outflows near the dust torus. With closely separated 12 projected quasar pairs at different redshifts with a separation angle of θ < 120″, we examine H i absorption at foreground BAL quasars in the spectra of background quasars. We confirm that there exists optically thick gas around two of 12 BAL quasars, and that the mean H i absorption strength is EWrest ∼ 1 Å. This is consistent with past results of studies of non-BAL quasars, although not statistically significant. The origins of optically thick H i absorbers around BAL and non-BAL quasars could be different since their column densities are different by ∼3 orders of magnitude. A larger sample is required to narrow down possible scenarios explaining the anisotropic H i absorption around quasars.