Subrelativistic Jets from Black Hole Accretion Vortices. II. The Broad Absorption Lines in Quasars

This article is an analysis of the broad absorption line properties of a theory of quasars described in a companion paper (Paper I) that differentiates radio-loud quasars from radio-quiet quasars by the magnetic field structure, or lack thereof, in the vortex of an accretion flow around a supermassive rapidly rotating black hole. Nonmagnetic vortices (the radio-quiet case) can initiate radiation pressure-driven jets, as shown in Paper I and these bipolar outflows are candidate broad absorption line regions. The primary emphases of this article are the far-field dynamics and the observational implications of the radiation-driven jets from accretion vortices conjectured to exist in radio-quiet quasars. The well-known confinement problem of the broad line absorbing gas is solved by these hypersonic underexpanded jets as they are collimated kinematically with an opening angle of the order of the inverse of the Mach number. The asymptotic jet velocities are found by a detailed analysis of the force of gravity, continuum radiation pressure, and line-driving forces on the jet plasma. The dynamics are explored through time stationary solutions. However, the general solution is considered to be a superposition of episodic quasistationary funnel ejecta as the accretion flow is most likely dynamically unsteady. The final state outflow is a series of geometrically thin clouds with a distribution of velocities ranging from 0 to ≈ 35,000 km s -1 . The most significant implication of this model is that radio-loud quasars (magnetic flux filled accretion vortices) do not have broad absorption line outflows.