Determining Inclinations of Active Galactic Nuclei Via Their Narrow-Line Region Kinematics

By T. Fischer. 2012

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Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are axisymmetric systems to first order; their observed properties are likely strong functions of inclination with respect to our line of sight, yet the specific inclinations of all but a few AGNs are generally unknown. By determining the inclinations and geometries of nearby Seyfert galaxies using the kinematics of their narrow-line regions (NLRs) and comparing them with observed properties, we find strong correlations between inclination and total hydrogen column density, infrared color, and Hβ FWHM. These correlations provide evidence that the orientation of AGNs with respect to our line of sight affects how we perceive them beyond the Seyfert 1/2 dichotomy. They can also be used to constrain three-dimensional models of AGN components such as the broad-line region and torus. Additionally, we find weak correlations between AGN luminosity and several modeled NLR parameters, which suggests that the NLR geometry and kinematics are dependent to some degree on the AGN's radiation field.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9f04915ac92094c6d20ab88becaaa44e020ec416

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Citations in the corpus

The SAMI Galaxy Survey: shocks and outflows in a normal star-forming galaxy (2014, background): “Outflows in narrow line regions (NLRs) in Seyfert galaxies are typically confined to the c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 kiloparsec to sub-kiloparsec scale (Bennert et al. 2006a,b; Fischer et al. 2013), and NLRs in LINERs are smaller, few tens to few hundred parsecs (Masegosa et al. 2011).”
Revisiting the Unified Model of Active Galactic Nuclei (2015, background): “The kinematic studies provide information about the motion of the line emitting gas inside the cones (e.g. Müller-Sánchez et al. 2011, Fischer et al. 2014).”
The dusty torus in the Circinus galaxy: a dense disk and the torus funnel (2013, background): “While the projected half opening angle of the visible ionisation cone onto the plane of the sky is ϑproj ∼ 45° (Wilson et al. 2000), the physical half opening angle has been estimated to be ϑcone ∼ 41◦ from modelling of the narrow line kinematics (Fischer et al. 2013).”
Kiloparsec-scale outflows are prevalent among luminous AGN: outflows and feedback in the context of the overall AGN population (2014, background): “In contrast, outflows driven by an AGN on small scaleshave no relation between the orientation of the outflow and the disk in the host galaxy (e.g., Fischer et al. 2013).”
Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. IX. 10 New Observations of Reverberation Mapping and Shortened Hβ Lags (2018, background): “We took =icos 0.75 (see some discussions in Paper V), which is an average estimate for type I AGNs (e.g., Fischer et al. 2014; Pancoast et al. 2014).”