Jian Wu@Penn State Astronomy

Introduction

My name is Jian Wu. I am currently a second year graduate student studying in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department in the Pennsylvania State University. I am interested in active galactic nuclei (AGN), especially quasars, which are its most energetic members. I have been working with Dr. Jane Charlton on the narrow intrinsic absorption lines. We have some quasars that have very strong NV narrow absorption lines compared with Lyman Alpha absorptions. We model the with Cloudy (Ferland 2001) by applying the photoionization model. Our goal is to explore the physical conditions of these absorbers. These absorbers are believed to be produced by ourflowing winds starting from the base of the accretion disk, thus their conditions are extremely associated with the quasar's central engine. The modeling results indicate a very high solar abundance and ionization phase. Also it gives well constrains of the volumn densities of these absorbers.

Next academic year, I am working with Dr. Donald Schneider in the Sloan Digial Sky Survey (SDSS). We plan to combine recently released data from the SDSS from multiband observations to investigate the general properties of quasars at redshifts larger than 4. The sample will contain over 500 quasars, which will be about an order of magnitude larger than the previous such study.