The Baldwin effect in the narrow emission lines of AGNs
  The anti-correlations between the equivalent widths of emission lines and the
continuum luminosity in AGNs, known as the Baldwin effect are well established
for broad lines, but are less well studied for narrow lines. In this paper we
explore the Baldwin effect of narrow emission lines over a wide range of
ionization levels and critical densities using a large sample of broad-line,
radio-quiet AGNs taken from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 4.
These type1 AGNs span three orders of magnitude in continuum luminosity. We
show that most narrow lines show a similar Baldwin effect slope of about -0.2
while the significant deviations of the slopes for [NII] 6583, [OII] 3727,
[NeV] 3425, and the narrow component of Ha can be explained by the influence of
metallicity, star-formation contamination and possibly by difference in the
shape of the UV-optical continuum. The slopes do not show any correlation with
either the ionization potential or the critical density. We show that a
combination of 50% variations in continuum near 5100A and a log-normal
distribution of observed luminosity can naturally reproduce a constant Baldwin
effect slope of -0.2 for all narrow lines. The variations of the continuum
could be due to variability, intrinsic anisotropic emission, or an inclination
effect.
