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Non-blackbody disks can help explain inferred AGN accretion disk sizes

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HallSarrouhHorne_Resubmitted20180106.pdf (1.625Mb)
Date
20/02/2018
Author
Hall, Patrick
Sarrouh, Ghassan
Horne, Keith
Keywords
Accretion disks
Galaxies: active
Galaxies: individual (NGC 5548)
Quasars: general
QB Astronomy
QC Physics
NDAS
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Abstract
If the atmospheric density ρatm in the accretion disk of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) is sufficiently low, scattering in the atmosphere can produce a non-blackbody emergent spectrum. For a given bolometric luminosity, at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths such disks have lower fluxes and apparently larger sizes as compared to disks that emit as blackbodies. We show that models in which ρatm is a sufficiently low fixed fraction of the interior density ρ can match the AGN STORM observations of NGC 5548 but produce disk spectral energy distributions that peak at shorter wavelengths than observed in luminous AGN in general. Thus, scattering atmospheres can contribute to the explanation for large inferred AGN accretion disk sizes but are unlikely to be the only contributor. In the appendix section, we present unified equations for the interior ρ and T in gas pressure-dominated regions of a thin accretion disk.
Citation
Hall , P , Sarrouh , G & Horne , K 2018 , ' Non-blackbody disks can help explain inferred AGN accretion disk sizes ' , Astrophysical Journal , vol. 854 , no. 2 , 93 . https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aaa768
Publication
Astrophysical Journal
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aaa768
ISSN
0004-637X
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018, American Astronomical Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aaa768
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/12758

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