Observing broad-absorption line quasars with Spectrum-Röntgen-Gamma

Abstract

Broad-absorption line quasars are found to have extremely weak soft X-ray emission when compared with other optically selected quasars. In the only example of PHL 5200 for which a detailed X-ray spectrum has been obtained with ASCA, strong absorption in the source appears to be responsible for the lack of soft X-ray emission. Broad-band X-ray observations of a sample of BAL QSOs are proposed with a high throughput mission Spectrum-Röntgen-Gamma (SRG), to find out whether these sources are intrinsically weak over the entire bandwidth of X-rays or only in the soft X-rays due to absorption resulting from the line of sight passing through large column density clouds. Simultaneous UV observations will help to constrain the ionization state of the absorbers, and also improve the overall UV to X-ray continuum measurements in them.