BAL and non-BAL quasars: continuum, emission, and absorption properties establish a common parent sample
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Using a sample of ≃144 000 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 14, we investigate the outflow properties, evident in both absorption and emission, of high-ionization broad absorption line (BAL) and non-BAL quasars with redshifts 1.6 ≲ $z$ ≤ 3.5 and luminosities 45.3 erg s−1 < log10(Lbol) < 48.2 erg s−1. Key to the investigation is a continuum and emission-line reconstruction scheme, based on mean-field independent component analysis, that allows the kinematic properties of the C iv λ1550 emission line to be compared directly for both non-BAL and BAL quasars. C iv emission blueshift and equivalent width (EW) measurements are thus available for both populations. Comparisons of the emission-line and BAL trough properties reveal strong systematic correlations between the emission and absorption properties. The dependence of quantitative outflow indicators on physical properties such as quasar luminosity and luminosity relative to Eddington luminosity is also shown to be essentially identical for the BAL and non-BAL populations. There is an absence of BALs in quasars with the hardest spectral energy distributions (SEDs), revealed by the presence of strong He ii λ1640 emission, large C iv λ1550 emission EW, and no measurable blueshift. In the remainder of the C iv emission blueshift versus EW space, BAL and non-BAL quasars are present at all locations; for every BAL quasar, it is possible to identify non-BAL quasars with the same emission-line outflow properties and SED hardness. The co-location of BAL and non-BAL quasars as a function of emission-line outflow and physical properties is the key result of our investigation, demonstrating that (high-ionization) BALs and non-BALs represent different views of the same underlying quasar population.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".