Extreme variability quasars. II. SDSS sp. fitting

We previously built a sample of 14,012 extremely variable quasars (EVQs) based on Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Pan-STARRS1 photometric observations. In this work we present the spectral fitting to their SDSS spectra and study the spectral variation in 1259 EVQs with multiepoch SDSS spectra (after prudently excluding spectra with potentially unreliable spectroscopic photometry). We find a clear "bluer-when-brighter" trend in EVQs, consistent with previous findings of normal quasars and active galactic nuclei. We detect significant intrinsic Baldwin effect (iBeff, i.e., smaller line equivalent width at higher continuum flux in individual active galactic nuclei) in the broad MgII and CIV lines of EVQs. Meanwhile, no systematical iBeff is found for the broad H{beta} line, which could be attributed to strong host contamination at longer wavelengths. Remarkably, by comparing the iBeff slope of EVQs with archived changing-look quasars, we show that the changing-look quasars identified in the literature are most likely a biased (due to its definition) subpopulation of EVQs, rather than a distinct population of quasars. We also found no significant broad line breathing of H{beta}, MgII, or CIV, suggesting the broad line breathing in quasars may disappear at longer timescales (~3000days).

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/963/7/table1 (The extremely variable quasar (EVQ) catalog (see Appendix A))

Identifier
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/963/7
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/963/7
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/963/7
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/963/7
Provenance
Creator Ren W.; Wang J.; Cai Z.; Hu X.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2026
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; High Energy Astrophysics; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy