Molecular Gas in Quasar Hosts
Abstract
Description
The study of molecular gas in quasar host galaxies addresses a number of interesting questions pertaining to the hosts' ISM, to unified schemes relating quasars and IR galaxies, and to the processes fueling nuclear activity. In this contribution I review observations of molecular gas in quasar hosts from z=0.06 to z=4.7. The Cloverleaf quasar at z=2.5 is featured as a case where there are now enough detected transitions (four in CO, and one each in CI and HCN) to allow detailed modeling of physical conditions in the molecular ISM. We find that the CO-emitting gas is warmer, denser, and less optically thick than that found in typical Galactic molecular clouds. These differences are probably due to the presence of the luminous quasar in the nucleus of the Cloverleaf's host galaxy.
9 pages, Latex using lamuphys macro package from Springer-Verlag; Invited presentation, to appear in the proceedings of the ESA-IAC Conference "Quasar Hosts", ESO Astrophysics Symposia eds. D. Clements and I. Perez-Fournon [Springer-Verlag] in press
9 pages, Latex using lamuphys macro package from Springer-Verlag; Invited presentation, to appear in the proceedings of the ESA-IAC Conference "Quasar Hosts", ESO Astrophysics Symposia eds. D. Clements and I. Perez-Fournon [Springer-Verlag] in press