Obscuring Material around Seyfert Nuclei with Starbursts

By K. Wada, C. Norman. 2002

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The structure of obscuring matter in the environment of active galactic nuclei with associated nuclear starbursts is investigated using three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations. Simple analytical estimates suggest that the obscuring matter with energy feedback from supernovae has a torus-like structure with a radius of several tens of parsecs and a scale height of ~10 pc. These estimates are confirmed by the fully nonlinear numerical simulations, in which the multiphase inhomogeneous interstellar matter and its interaction with the supernovae are consistently followed. The globally stable, torus-like structure is highly inhomogeneous and turbulent. To achieve the high column densities (≳1024 cm-2) as suggested by observations of some Seyfert 2 galaxies with nuclear starbursts, the viewing angle should be larger than about 70° from the pole-on for a 108 M☉ massive black hole. Owing to the inhomogeneous internal structure of the torus, the observed column density is sensitive to the line of sight, and it fluctuates by a factor on the order of ~100. The covering fraction for N > 1023 cm-2 is about 0.4. The average accretion rate toward R < 1 pc is ~0.4 M☉ yr-1, which is boosted to twice that in the model without the energy feedback.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

• THREE-DIMENSIONAL HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF MULTIPHASE GALACTIC DISKS WITH STAR FORMATION FEEDBACK. I. REGULATION OF STAR FORMATION RATES (2013, background): “…Kim et al. 2006, 2010; Dobbs & Bonnell 2006), magnetorotational instability (Kim et al. 2003; Piontek & Ostriker 2005, 2007), large-scale gravitational instabilities (Wada & Norman 2002; Kim & Ostriker 2007; Agertz et al. 2009; Bournaud et al. 2010), and cosmic inflow (Klessen & Hennebelle 2010).”
• Alignment of the Spins of Supermassive Black Holes Prior to Coalescence (2007, background): “Both observations and simulations of multiphase interstellar matter with stellar feedback show a broad range of gas temperatures, where the largest fraction of gas by mass has a temperature of about 100 K (Wada & Norman 2001, 2002).”
• SUPER-CRITICAL GROWTH OF MASSIVE BLACK HOLES FROM STELLAR-MASS SEEDS (2014, background): “…a mass accretions rate (Pringle 1981) ṁ = 2πνΣ0 | d lnΩ d ln r |, (8) where Σ0 is the central surface density of the disk, ν ≃ σh is the viscous parameter (Wada & Norman 2002), σ is the gas turbulent velocity, h is the disk scale height, h/r ∼ σ/Vrot, and Vrot is the disk rotational velocity.”
• The dusty torus in the Circinus galaxy: a dense disk and the torus funnel (2013, methodology): “First attempts to address the physics of the accreting nuclear material in AGN have been undertaken using hydrodynamical simulations (Wada & Norman 2002; Dorodnitsyn et al. 2008; Schartmann et al. 2009; Wada et al. 2009; Wada 2012).”
• Three-dimensional radiative transfer modeling of AGN dusty tori as a clumpy two-phase medium (2011, background): “Wada & Norman(2002) (with model update inWada et al. 2009) performed a 3D hydrodynamical simulations, taking into account self-gravity of the gas, radiative cooling and heating due to supernovae.”
• What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “A wide range of analytical models, numerical simulations, and hydrodynamical simulations indeed predict that stellar winds and supernovae will enhance the BH mass accretion by injecting turbulence into the gas disc (e.g., Wada & Norman, 2002; Schartmann et al., 2009; Hobbs et al., 2011).”
• How do massive black holes get their gas (2009, background): “Alternatively, some simulations simply take an assumed smallscale structure and/or fixed inflow rate as an initial/boundary condition, and study the resulting gas dynamics at small radii (e.g. Schartmann et al. 2009; Dotti et al. 2009; Wada & Norman 2002; Wada, Papadopoulos & Spaans 2009).”
• The Star-forming Torus and Stellar Dynamical Black Hole Mass in the Seyfert 1 Nucleus of NGC 3227 (2006, background): “In the last few years, models have begun to consider star formation within the torus (Wada & Norman 2002; Thompson et al. 2005), giving credence – albeit with a different perspective – to some early ideas about stellar light in AGN spectra.”