English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

We explore reprocessing models for a sample of 17 hypervariable quasars,taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM)project, which all show coordinated optical luminosity hypervariability withamplitudes of factors $\gtrsim 2$ between 2014 and 2020. We develop and applyreprocessing models for quasar light curves in simple geometries that arelikely to be representative of quasar inner environments. In addition to thecommonly investigated thin-disk model, we include the thick-disk and hemispheregeometries. The thick-disk geometry could, for instance, represent amagnetically-elevated disk, whereas the hemisphere model can be interpreted asa first-order approximation for any optically-thick out-of-plane materialcaused by outflows/winds, warped/tilted disks, etc. Of the 17 quasars in oursample, eleven are best-fit by a hemisphere geometry, five are classified asthick disks, and both models fail for just one object. We highlight thesuccesses and shortcomings of our thermal reprocessing models in case studiesof four quasars that are representative of the sample. While reprocessing isunlikely to explain all of the variability we observe in quasars, we presentour classification scheme as a starting point for revealing the likelygeometries of reprocessing for quasars in our sample and hypervariable quasarsin general.

Reprocessing Models for the Optical Light Curves of Hypervariable Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project