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Register a new userNew evidence for the ubiquity of prominent polar dust emission in AGN on tens of parsec scales
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Daniel Asmus
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The key ingredient of active galactic nuclei (AGN) unification, the dusty obscuring torus was so far held responsible for the observed mid-infrared (MIR) emission of AGN. However, the best studied objects with VLTI/MIDI show that instead a polar dusty wind is dominating these wavelengths, leaving little room for a torus contribution. But is this wind an ubiquitous part of the AGN? To test this, we conducted a straightforward detection experiment, using the upgraded VLT/VISIR for deep subarcsecond resolution MIR imaging of a sample of nine [O IV]-bright, obscured AGN, all of which were predicted to have detectable polar emission. Indeed, the new data reveal such emission in all objects but one. We further estimate lower limits on the extent of the polar dust and show that the polar dust emission is dominating the total MIR emission of the AGN. These findings support the scenario that polar dust is not only ubiquitous in AGN but also an integral part of its structure, processing a significant part of the primary radiation. The polar dust has to be optically thin on average, which explains, e.g., the small dispersion in the observed mid-infrared--X-ray luminosity correlation. At the same time, it has to be taken into account when deriving covering factors of obscuring material from mid-infrared to bolometric luminosity ratios. Finally, we find a new tentative trend of increasing MIR emission size with increasing Eddington ratio.
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Advancements in infrared IR open up the possibility to spatially resolve AGN on the parsec-scale level and study the circumnuclear dust distribution, commonly referred to as the dust torus, that is held responsible for the type 1/type 2 dichotomy of AGN. We used the mid-IR beam combiner MIDI together with the 8m telescopes at the VLTI to observe the nucleus of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 424, achieving an almost complete coverage of the uv-plane accessible by the available telescope configurations. We detect extended mid-IR emission with a relatively baseline- and model-independent mid-IR half-light radius of (2.0 pm 0.2) pc times (1.5 pm 0.3) pc (averaged over the 8-13 {mu}m wavelength range). The extended mid-IR source shows an increasing size with wavelength. The orientation of the major axis in position angle -27deg is closely aligned with the system axis as set by optical polarization observations. Torus models typically favor extension along the mid-plane at mid-IR wavelengths instead. Therefore, we conclude that the majority of the pc-scale mid-IR emission (>~60%) in this type 2 AGN originates from optically-thin dust in the polar region of the AGN, a scenario consistent with the near- to far-IR SED. We suggest that a radiatively-driven dusty wind, possibly launched in a puffed-up region of the inner hot part of the torus, is responsible for the polar dust. In this picture, the torus dominates the near-IR emission up to about 5 {mu}m, while the polar dust is the main contributor to the mid-IR flux. Our results of NGC 424 are consistent with recent observations of the AGN in the Circinus galaxy and resemble large-scale characteristics of other objects. If our results reflect a general property of the AGN population, the current paradigm for interpreting and modeling the IR emission of AGN have to be revised. (abridged)
(abridged) It is generally assumed that the distribution of dust on parsec scales forms a geometrically- and optically-thick entity in the equatorial plane around the accretion disk and broad-line region - dubbed dust torus - that emits the bulk of the sub-arcsecond-scale IR emission and gives rise to orientation-dependent obscuration. Here we report detailed interferometry observations of the unobscured (type 1) AGN in NGC 3783 that allow us to constrain the size, elongation, and direction of the mid-IR emission with high accuracy. The mid-IR emission is characterized by a strong elongation toward position angle PA -52 deg, closely aligned with the polar axis (PA -45 deg). We determine half-light radii along the major and minor axes at 12.5 {mu}m of (4.23 +/- 0.63) pc x (1.42 +/- 0.21) pc, which corresponds to intrinsically-scaled sizes of (69.4 +/- 10.8) rin x (23.3 +/- 3.5) rin for the inner dust radius of rin = 0.061 pc as inferred from near-IR reverberation mapping. This implies an axis ratio of 3:1, with about 60-90% of the 8-13 {mu}m emission associated with the polar-elongated component. These observations are difficult to reconcile with the standard interpretation that most of the parsec-scale mid-IR emission in AGN originates from the torus and challenges the justification of using simple torus models to model the broad-band IR emission. It is quite likely that the hot-dust emission in NGC 3783 as recently resolved by near-IR interferometry is misaligned with the mid-IR emitting source, which also finds a correspondence in the two distinct 3-5 {mu}m and 20 {mu}m bumps seen in the high-angular resolution spectral energy distribution (SED). We conclude that these observations support a scenario where the majority of the mid-IR emission in Seyfert AGN originates from a dusty wind in the polar region of the AGN.
We have compared the radio emission from a sample of parsec-scale AGN jets as measured by the VLBA at 15 GHz, with their associated gamma-ray properties that are reported in the Fermi LAT 3-month bright source list. We find in our radio-selected sample that the gamma-ray photon flux correlates well with the quasi-simultaneously measured compact radio flux density. The LAT-detected jets in our radio-selected complete sample generally have higher compact radio flux densities, and their parsec-scale cores are brighter (i.e., have higher brightness temperature) than the jets in the LAT non-detected objects. This suggests that the jets of bright gamma-ray AGN have preferentially higher Doppler-boosting factors. In addition, AGN jets tend to be found in a more active radio state within several months from LAT-detection of their strong gamma-ray emission. This result becomes more pronounced for confirmed gamma-ray flaring sources. We identify the parsec-scale radio core as a likely location for both the gamma-ray and radio flares, which appear within typical timescales of up to a few months of each other.
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