The advent of high-angular-resolution IR and submillimeter interferometry allows for spatially resolved observations of the parsec-scale environment of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), commonly ...referred to as the "torus." While molecular lines show the presence of large, massive disks, the IR observations appear to be dominated by a strong polar component that has been interpreted as a dusty wind. This paper aims at using characteristics shared by AGNs in each of the wavebands and a set of simple physical principles to form a unifying view of these seemingly contradictory observations: dusty molecular gas flows in from galactic scales of ∼100 pc to the subparsec environment via a disk with small to moderate scale height. The hot, inner part of the disk puffs up due to IR radiation pressure and unbinds a large amount of the inflowing gas from the black hole's gravitational potential, providing the conditions to launch a wind driven by the radiation pressure from the AGN. The dusty wind feeds back mass into the galaxy at a rate of the order of ∼0.1-100 M yr−1, depending on the AGN luminosity and Eddington ratio. Angle-dependent obscuration as required by AGN unification is provided by a combination of disk, wind, and wind-launching region.
This Letter presents a revised radiative transfer model for the infrared (IR) emission of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). While current models assume that the IR is emitted from a dusty torus in the ...equatorial plane of the AGNs, spatially resolved observations indicate that the majority of the IR emission from 100 pc in many AGNs originates from the polar region, contradicting classical torus models. The new model CAT3D-WIND builds upon the suggestion that the dusty gas around the AGNs consists of an inflowing disk and an outflowing wind. Here, it is demonstrated that (1) such disk+wind models cover overall a similar parameter range of observed spectral features in the IR as classical clumpy torus models, e.g., the silicate feature strengths and mid-IR spectral slopes, (2) they reproduce the 3-5 m bump observed in many type 1 AGNs unlike torus models, and (3) they are able to explain polar emission features seen in IR interferometry, even for type 1 AGNs at relatively low inclination, as demonstrated for NGC3783. These characteristics make it possible to reconcile radiative transfer models with observations and provide further evidence of a two-component parsec-scale dusty medium around AGNs: the disk gives rise to the 3-5 m near-IR component, while the wind produces the mid-IR emission. The model SEDs will be made available for download.
The active galaxy NGC 4151 has a crucial role as one of only two active galactic nuclei for which black hole mass measurements based on emission line reverberation mapping can be calibrated against ...other dynamical techniques. Unfortunately, effective calibration requires accurate knowledge of the distance to NGC 4151, which is not at present available. Recently reported distances range from 4 to 29 megaparsecs. Strong peculiar motions make a redshift-based distance very uncertain, and the geometry of the galaxy and its nucleus prohibit accurate measurements using other techniques. Here we report a dust-parallax distance to NGC 4151 of 19.0(+2.4)(-2.6) megaparsecs. The measurement is based on an adaptation of a geometric method that uses the emission line regions of active galaxies. Because these regions are too small to be imaged with present technology, we use instead the ratio of the physical and angular sizes of the more extended hot-dust emission as determined from time delays and infrared interferometry. This distance leads to an approximately 1.4-fold increase in the dynamical black hole mass, implying a corresponding correction to emission line reverberation masses of black holes if they are calibrated against the two objects with additional dynamical masses.
Abstract
Infrared interferometry of Seyfert galaxies has revealed that their warm (300–400 K) dust emission originates primarily from polar regions instead of from an equatorial dust torus as ...predicted by the classic AGN unification scheme. We present new data for the type 1.2 object ESO 323-G77 obtained with the MID-infrared interferometric Instrument and a new detailed morphological study of its warm dust. The partially resolved emission on scales between 5 and 50 mas (1.6–16 pc) is decomposed into a resolved and an unresolved source. Approximately 65% of the correlated flux between 8 and 13
μ
m is unresolved at all available baseline lengths. The remaining 35% is partially resolved and shows angular structure. From geometric modeling, we find that the emission is elongated along a position angle of 155° ± 14° with an axis ratio (major/minor) of 2.9 ± 0.3. Because the system axis is oriented in the position angle 174° ± 2°, we conclude that the dust emission of this object is also polar extended. A
CAT3D-WIND
radiative transfer model of a dusty disk and a dusty wind with a half opening angle of 30° can reproduce both the interferometric data and the SED, while a classical torus model is unable to fit the interferometric data. We interpret this as further evidence that a polar dust component is required even for low-inclination type 1 sources.
Resolving the Hot Dust Disk of ESO323-G77 Leftley, James H.; Tristram, Konrad R. W.; Hönig, Sebastian F. ...
The Astrophysical journal,
05/2021, Volume:
912, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
Infrared interferometry has led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the dusty structure in the central parsecs of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The dust is now thought to comprise a ...hot (∼1000 K) equatorial disk, some of which is blown into a cooler (∼300 K) polar dusty wind by radiation pressure. In this paper, we utilize the new near-IR interferometer GRAVITY on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to study a Type 1.2 AGNs hosted in the nearby Seyfert galaxy ESO 323-G77. By modeling the squared visibility and closure phase, we find that the hot dust is equatorially extended, consistent with the idea of a disk, and shows signs of asymmetry in the same direction. Furthermore, the data is fully consistent with the hot dust size determined by
K
-band reverberation mapping as well as the predicted size from a CAT3D-WIND model created in previous work using the spectral energy distribution of ESO 323-G77 and observations in the mid-IR from VLTI/MID-infrared Interferometric instrument).
X-ray signatures of the polar dusty gas in AGN Liu, Jiren; Hönig, Sebastian F; Ricci, Claudio ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
12/2019, Volume:
490, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
ABSTRACT
Recent mid-infrared interferometry observations of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN) revealed that a significant part of the dust emission extends in the polar direction, rather than the ...equatorial torus/disc direction as expected by the traditional unification model. We study the X-ray signatures of this polar dusty gas with ray-tracing simulations. Different from those from the ionized gas, the scattered emission from the polar dusty gas produces self-absorption and neutral-like fluorescence lines, which are potentially a unique probe of the kinematics of the polar dusty gas. The anomalously small Fe Kα/Si Kα ratios of type 2 AGN observed previously can be naturally explained by the polar dusty gas, because the polar emission does not suffer from heavy absorption by the dense equatorial gas. The observed Si Kα lines of the Circinus galaxy and NGC 1068 show blueshifts with respect to the systemic velocities of the host galaxies, consistent with an outflowing scenario of the Si Kα-emitting gas. The 2.5–3 keV image of the Circinus galaxy is elongated along the polar direction, consistent with an origin of the polar gas. These results show that the polar-gas-scattered X-ray emission of type 2 AGN is an ideal objective for future X-ray missions, such as Athena.
Context. With infrared interferometry it is possible to resolve the nuclear dust distributions that are commonly associated with the dusty torus in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The Circinus galaxy ...hosts the closest Seyfert 2 nucleus and previous interferometric observations have shown that its nuclear dust emission is particularly well resolved. Aims. The aim of the present interferometric investigation is to better constrain the dust morphology in this active nucleus. Methods. To this end, extensive new observations were carried out with the MID-infrared Interferometric instrument (MIDI) at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, leading to a total of 152 correlated flux spectra and differential phases between 8 and 13 μm. To interpret this data, we used a model consisting of black-body emitters with a Gaussian brightness distribution and with dust extinction. Results. The direct analysis of the data and the modelling confirm that the emission is distributed in two distinct components: a disk-like emission component with a size (FWHM) of ~0.2 × 1.1 pc and an extended component with a size of ~0.8 × 1.9 pc. The disk-like component is elongated along PA ~ 46° and oriented perpendicular to the ionisation cone and outflow. The extended component is responsible for 80% of the mid-infrared emission. It is elongated along PA ~ 107°, which is roughly perpendicular to the disk component and thus in polar direction. It is interpreted as emission from the inner funnel of an extended dust distribution and shows a strong increase in the extinction towards the south-east. We find both emission components to be consistent with dust at T ~ 300 K, that is we find no evidence of an increase in the temperature of the dust towards the centre. From this we infer that most of the near-infrared emission probably comes from parsec scales as well. We further argue that the disk component alone is not sufficient to provide the necessary obscuration and collimation of the ionising radiation and outflow. The material responsible for this must instead be located on scales of ~1 pc, surrounding the disk. We associate this material with the dusty torus. Conclusions. The clear separation of the dust emission into a disk-like emitter and a polar elongated source will require an adaptation of our current understanding of the dust emission in AGN. The lack of any evidence of an increase in the dust temperature towards the centre poses a challenge for the picture of a centrally heated dust distribution.
The Fe Kα emission line is the most ubiquitous feature in the X-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), but the origin of its narrow core remains uncertain. Here, we investigate the connection ...between the sizes of the Fe Kα core emission regions and the measured sizes of the dusty tori in 13 local Type 1 AGNs. The observed Fe Kα emission radii (R{sub Fe}) are determined from spectrally resolved line widths in X-ray grating spectra, and the dust sublimation radii (R{sub dust}) are measured either from optical/near-infrared (NIR) reverberation time lags or from resolved NIR interferometric data. This direct comparison shows, on an object-by-object basis, that the dust sublimation radius forms an outer envelope to the bulk of the Fe Kα emission. R{sub Fe} matches R{sub dust} well in the AGNs, with the best constrained line widths currently. In a significant fraction of objects without a clear narrow line core, R{sub Fe} is similar to, or smaller than, the radius of the optical broad line region. These facts place important constraints on the torus geometries for our sample. Extended tori in which the solid angle of fluorescing gas peaks at well beyond the dust sublimation radius can be ruled out. We also test for luminosity scalings of R{sub Fe}, finding that the Eddington ratio is not a prime driver in determining the line location in our sample. We also discuss in detail potential caveats of data analysis and instrumental limitations, simplistic line modeling, uncertain black hole masses, and sample selection, showing that none of these is likely to bias our core result. The calorimeter on board Astro-H will soon vastly increase the parameter space over which line measurements can be made, overcoming many of these limitations.
The active galaxy NGC 4151 has a crucial role as one of only two active galactic nuclei for which black hole mass measurements based on emission line reverberation mapping can be calibrated against ...other dynamical techniques1-3. Unfortunately, effective calibration requires accurate knowledge of the distance to NGC4151, which is not at present available4. Recently reported distances range from4 to 29 megaparsecs5-7. Strong peculiar motions make a red shift-based distance very uncertain, and the geometry of the galaxy and its nucleus prohibit accurate measurements using other techniques. Here we report a dust-parallax distance to NGC 4151 of 19:0^sup +2:4^^sup -2:6^ megaparsecs. The measurement is based on an adaptation of a geometric method that uses the emission line regions of active galaxies8. Because these regions are too small to be imaged with present technology, we use instead the ratio of the physical and angular sizes of the more extended hot-dust emission9 as determined from time delays10 and infrared interferometry11-14. This distance leads to an approximately 1.4-fold increase in the dynamical black hole mass, implying a corresponding correction to emission line reverberation masses of black holes if they are calibrated against the two objects with additional dynamical masses.
Abstract
Near- and mid-infrared interferometers have resolved the dusty parsec-scale obscurer (torus) around nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs). With the arrival of extremely large single-aperture ...telescopes, the emission morphology will soon be resolvable unambiguously, without modeling directly the underlying brightness distribution probed by interferometers today. Simulations must instead deliver the projected 2D brightness distribution as a result of radiative transfer through a 3D distribution of dusty matter around the AGN. We employ such physically motivated 3D dust distributions in tori around AGNs to compute 2D images of the emergent thermal emission, using C
lumpy
, a dust radiative transfer code for clumpy media. We demonstrate that C
lumpy
models can exhibit morphologies with significant polar elongation in the mid-infrared (i.e., the emission extends perpendicular to the dust distribution) on scales of several parsecs, in line with observations in several nearby AGNs. We characterize the emission and cloud distribution morphologies. The observed emission from near- to mid-infrared wavelengths generally does not trace the bulk of the cloud distribution. The elongation of the emission is sensitive to the torus opening angle or scale height. For cloud distributions with a flat radial profile, polar extended emission is realized only at wavelengths shorter than ∼18
μ
m, and shorter than ∼5
μ
m for steep profiles. We make the full results available through H
ypercat
, a large hypercube of resolved AGN torus brightness maps computed with C
lumpy
. H
ypercat
also comprises software to process and analyze such large data cubes and provides tools to simulate observations with various current and future telescopes.
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