A Catalog of Broad Absorption Line Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release

We present a catalog of 224 broad absorption line quasars (BALQSOs) from theSloan Digital Sky Survey's Early Data Release Quasar Catalog, including arelatively complete and homogeneous subsample of 131 BALQSOs. Since theidentification of BALQSOs is subject to considerable systematic uncertainties,we attempt to create a complete sample of SDSS BALQSOs by combining the resultsof two automated selection algorithms and a by-eye classification scheme. Oneof these automated algorithms finds broad absorption line troughs by comparisonwith a composite quasar spectrum. We present the details of this algorithm andcompare this method to that which uses a power-law fit to the continuum. TheBALQSOs in our sample are further classified as high-ionization BALQSOs(HiBALs), low-ionization BALQSOs (LoBALs), and BALQSOs with excited ironabsorption features (FeLoBALs); composite spectra of each type are presented.We further present a study of the properties of the BALQSOs in terms of thebalnicity distribution, which rises with decreasing balnicity. Thisdistribution of balnicities suggests that the fraction of quasars withintrinsic outflows may be significantly underestimated.Comment: 36 pages, 7 figures (1 color), 2 tables, accepted by A