The dusty clumpy torus surrounds the central black hole (BH) and the accretion disk in active galactic nuclei, and governs the growth of super-massive BHs via gas fueling towards the central engine. Near-infrared (NIR) monitoring observations have revealed that the torus inner radius is determined by the dust sublimation process. However, the observed radii are systematically smaller than the theoretical predictions by a factor of three.
We take into account the anisotropic illumination by the central accretion disk to the torus, and calculate the innermost structure of the torus and the NIR time variablity. We then show that the anisotropy naturally solves the systematic descrepancy and that the viewing angle is the primary source to produce an object-to-object scatter of the NIR time delay. Dynamics of clumps at the innermost region of the torus will be unveiled via future high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy (e.g., Astro-H).
Context: Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are anisotropic objects surrounded by an optically thick equatorial medium whose true geometry still defy observers. Aims: In this paper, we aim to explore the optical, scattering-induced, polarization emerging from clumpy and warped dusty tori to check whether they can fit with the unified model predictions. Methods: We run polarized radiative transfer simulations in a set of warped and non warped clumpy tori to explore the differences induced by distorted dust distributions. We then include warped tori in a more complex model representative of an AGN to …
We construct an X-ray spectral model of reprocessing by a torus in an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a Monte Carlo simulation framework MONACO. Two torus geometries of smooth and clumpy cases are considered and compared. In order to reproduce a Compton shoulder accurately, MONACO includes not only free electron scattering but also bound electron scattering. Raman and Reyleigh scattering are also treated, and scattering cross sections dependent on chemical states of hydrogen and helium are included. Doppler broadening by turbulence velocity can be implemented. Our model gives consistent res…
We present a spectral and imaging analysis of the X-ray reflecting structure at the heart of the Circinus galaxy, investigating the innermost regions surrounding the central black hole. By studying an archival 200 ks Chandra ACIS-S observation, we are able to image the extended clumpy structure responsible for both cold reflection of the primary radiation and neutral iron Ka line emission. We measure an excess of the equivalent width of the iron Ka line which follows an axisymmetric geometry around the nucleus on a hundred pc scale. Spectra extracted from different regions confirm a scenario i…
A growing body of evidence suggests that part of, if not all, scattering regions of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are clumpy. Hence. in this paper, we run radiative transfer models in the optical/UV for a variety of AGN reprocessing regions with different distributions of clumpy scattering media. We use the latest version of the Monte Carlo code STOKES presented in the first two papers of this series to model AGN reprocessing regions of increasing morphological complexity. We replace previously uniform-density media with up to thousands of constant-density clumps. We couple a continuum source …
We present the results of a systematic, broadband X-ray spectral analysis of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with the X-ray clumpy torus model (XCLUMPY; Tanimoto et al. 2019). By adding 16 AGNs newly analyzed in this paper, we study total 28 AGNs including unabsorbed and absorbed AGNs taken from Ichikawa et al. (2015) and García-Bernete et al. (2019). This is the largest sample whose X-ray and infrared spectra are analyzed by the clumpy torus models XCLUMPY and CLUMPY (Nenkova et al. 2008), respectively. The relation between the Eddington ratio and the torus covering factor determined fro…
We construct an X-ray spectral model for the clumpy torus in an active galactic nucleus (AGN) using Geant4, which includes the physical processes of the photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, Rayleigh scattering, $γ$ conversion, fluorescence line, and Auger process. Since the electrons in the torus are expected to be bounded instead of free, the deviation of the scattering cross section from the Klein-Nishina cross section has also been included, which changes the X-ray spectra by up to 25% below $10$ keV. We have investigated the effect of the clumpiness parameters on the reflection spectr…
We apply a new X-ray clumpy torus model called XCLUMPY (Tanimoto et al. 2019), where the clump distribution is assumed to be the same as in the infrared clumpy torus model (CLUMPY) by Nenkova et al. 2008, to the broadband X-ray spectra of type-1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) for the first time. We analyze the archival data of IC 4329A and NGC 7469 observed with NuSTAR/Suzaku and NuSTAR/XMM-Newton, respectively, whose infrared spectra were studied with CLUMPY by Ichikawa et al. 2015 and optical extinctions ($A_{\rm V}$) of the tori were estimated. We consider two models, invoking (Model 1) a re…
The reflection spectrum of the torus around AGN is characterized by X-ray fluorescent lines, which are most prominent for type II AGN. A clumpy torus allows photons reflected from the back-side of the torus to leak through the front free-of-obscuration regions. Therefore, the observed X-ray fluorescent lines are sensitive to the clumpiness of the torus. We analyse a sample of type II AGN observed with Chandra HETGS, and measure the fluxes for the Si Ka and Fe Ka lines. The measured Fe Ka/Si Ka ratios, spanning a range between $5-60$, are far smaller than the ratios predicted from simulations o…
We present Very Long Baseline Array polarimetric observations of the innermost jet of 3C$\sim$84 (NGC$\sim$1275) at 43$\sim$GHz. A significant polarized emission is detected at the hotspot of the innermost re-started jet, which is located $\sim$1 pc south from the radio core. While the previous report presented a hotspot at the southern end of the western limb, the hotspot location has been moved to the southern end of the eastern limb. Faraday rotation is detected within an entire bandwidth of the 43-GHz band. The measured rotation measure (RM) is at most (6.3$\pm$1.9)$\times10^{5}$$\sim$rad$…
Significant fraction of matter in supercritical (or super-Eddington) accretion flow is blown away by radiation force, thus forming outflows, however, the properties of such radiation-driven outflows have been poorly understood. We have performed global two-dimensional radiaion-magnetohydrodynamic simulations of supercritical accretion flow onto a black hole with 10 or 10^8 solar masses in a large simulation box of 514 r_S x 514 r_S (with r_S being the Schwarzschild radius). We confirm that uncollimated outflows with velocities of 10 percents of the speed of light emerge from the innermost part…
We present an analysis of multi-timescale variability in line-of-sight X-ray absorbing gas as a function of optical classification in a large sample of Seyfert AGN to derive the first X-ray statistical constraints for clumpy-torus models. We systematically search for discrete absorption events in the vast archive of RXTE monitoring of dozens of nearby type I and Compton-thin type II AGN. We are sensitive to discrete absorption events due to clouds of full-covering, neutral or mildly ionized gas with columns >~ 10^(22-25) cm^-2 transiting the line of sight. We detect 12 eclipse events in 8 obje…
We performed axisymmetric hydrodynamical simulations of oscillating tori orbiting a non-rotating black hole. The tori in equilibrium were constructed with a constant distribution of angular momentum in a pseudo-Newtonian potential (Klu{ź}niak-Lee). Motions of the torus were triggered by adding sub-sonic velocity fields: radial, vertical and diagonal to the tori in equilibrium. As the perturbed tori evolved in time, we measured $L_{2}$ norm of density and obtained the power spectrum of $L_{2}$ norm which manifested eigenfrequencies of tori modes. The most prominent modes of oscillation excited …
We analyzed the spectral shape of the Compton shoulder around the neutral Fe-K$_α$ line of the Compton-thick type II Seyfert nucleus of the Circinus galaxy. The characteristics of this Compton shoulder with respect to the reflected continuum and Fe-K$_α$ line core intensity are a powerful diagnostics tool for analyzing the structure of the molecular tori, which obscure the central engine. We applied our Monte-Carlo-based X-ray reflection spectral model to the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating data and successfully constrained the various spectral parameters independently, using only the…
We estimate the dust torus cooling timescale once the active galactic nucleus (AGN) is quenched. In a clumpy torus system, once the incoming photons are suppressed, the cooling timescale of one clump from $T_{\rm dust}=1000$ K to several $10$ K is less than $10$ years, indicating that the dust torus cooling time is mainly governed by the light crossing time of the torus from the central engine. After considering the light crossing time of the torus, the AGN torus emission at $12~μ$m becomes over two orders of magnitude fainter within $100$ years after the quenching. We also propose that those …
Supermassive black holes in galaxy centres can grow by the accretion of gas, liberating energy that might regulate star formation on galaxy-wide scales. The nature of the gaseous fuel reservoirs that power black hole growth is nevertheless largely unconstrained by observations, and is instead routinely simplified as a smooth, spherical inflow of very hot gas. Recent theory and simulations instead predict that accretion can be dominated by a stochastic, clumpy distribution of very cold molecular clouds - a departure from the "hot mode" accretion model - although unambiguous observational suppor…
If the existence of an obscuring circumnuclear region around the innermost regions of active galactic nuclei (AGN) has been observationally proven, its geometry remains highly uncertain. The morphology usually adopted for this region is a toroidal structure, but other alternatives, such as flared disks, can be a good representative of equatorial outflows. Those two geometries usually provide very similar spectroscopic signatures, even when they are modeled under the assumption of fragmentation. In this lecture note, we show that the resulting polarization signatures of the two models, either a…
We examine a thick accretion disc in the presence of external gravity and intrinsic dipolar magnetic field due to a non-rotating central object. In this paper, we generalize the Newtonian theory of stationary axisymmetric resistive tori of Tripathy, Prasanna $\&$ Das (1990) by including the fully general relativistic features. If we are to obtain the steady state configuration, we have to take into account the finite resistivity for the magnetofluid in order to avoid the piling up of the field lines anywhere in the accretion discs. The efficient value of conductivity must be much smaller than …
We present the broadband (0.5-100 keV) spectra of three heavily obscured Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), NGC 1106, UGC 03752, and NGC 2788A, observed with Suzaku and Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). The targets are selected from the Swift/BAT 70-month catalog on the basis of high hardness ratio between above and below 10 keV, and their X-ray spectra are reported here for the first time. We apply three models, a conventional model utilizing an analytic reflection code and two Monte-Carlo based torus models with a doughnut-like geometry (MYTorus) and with a nearly spherical geometry (Ikeda toru…
The hard X-ray emission of active galactic nuclei (AGN), and in particular, the reflection component, is shaped by the innermost and outer regions of the galactic nucleus. Our main goal is to investigate the variation of the Compton hump amongst a population of sources and correlate it with other spectral properties to constrain the source geometry. We studied the NuSTAR hard X-ray spectra of a sample of 83 AGN and performed a detailed spectral analysis of each of them. Based on their spectral shape, we divided the sample into five categories and also studied their stacked spectra. We found a …
We have analyzed the broadband X-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in two "non-merging" luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) UGC 2608 and NGC 5135, utilizing the data of NuSTAR, Suzaku, XMM-Newton, and Chandra. Applying the X-ray clumpy-torus model (XCLUMPY: Tanimoto et al. 2019), we find that both sources have similar spectra characterized by Compton-thick (CT) absorption ($N_{\rm H} \sim$ 5-7 $\times$ $10^{24}$ cm$^{-2}$) and small torus angular width ($σ$ $<$ 20$^{\circ}$). The intrinsic 2-10 keV luminosities are $3.9^{+2.2}_{-1.7}$ $\times$ $10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$ (UGC 2608) and $2…
Dedicated searches generally find a decreasing fraction of obscured Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) with increasing AGN luminosity. This has often been interpreted as evidence for a decrease of the covering factor of the AGN torus with increasing luminosity, the so-called receding torus models. Using a complete flux-limited X-ray selected sample of 199 AGN, from the Bright Ultra-hard XMM-Newton Survey, we determine the intrinsic fraction of optical type-2 AGN at 0.05$\leq$z$\leq$1 as a function of rest-frame 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity from 10$^{42}$ to 10$^{45}$ erg/s. We use the distributions of …
We present a uniform broadband X-ray (0.5-100.0 keV) spectral analysis of 12 Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) selected Compton-thick ($\log N_{\mathrm{H}}/\mathrm{cm}^{-2} \geq 24$) Active Galactic Nuclei (CTAGNs) observed with Suzaku. The Suzaku data of 3 objects are published here for the first time. We fit the Suzaku and Swift spectra with models utilizing an analytic reflection code and those utilizing the Monte Carlo based model from an AGN torus by Ikeda et al. 2009. The main results are as follows. (1) The estimated intrinsic luminosity of a CTAGN strongly depends on the model; applyin…
The black-hole binary V404 Cyg entered the outburst phase in June 2015 after 26 years of X-ray quiescence, and with its behaviour broke the outburst evolution pattern typical of most black-hole binaries. We observed the entire outburst with the Swift satellite and performed time-resolved spectroscopy of its most active phase, obtaining over a thousand spectra with exposures from tens to hundreds of seconds. All the spectra can be fitted with an absorbed power law model, which most of the time required the presence of a partial covering. A blue-shifted iron-Kalpha line appears in 10% of the spe…
Multi-scale simulations have made it possible to follow gas inflows onto massive black holes (BHs) from galactic scales to the accretion disk. When sufficient gas is driven towards the BH, gravitational instabilities generically form lopsided, eccentric disks that propagate inwards. The lopsided stellar disk exerts a strong torque on the gas disk, driving inflows that fuel rapid BH growth. Here, we investigate whether the same gas disk is the 'torus' invoked to explain obscured AGN. The disk is generically thick and has characteristic ~1-10 pc sizes and masses resembling those required of the …
