Physical conditions in a hydrogen gas heated by suprathermal protons

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

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Atomic Excitations, Galactic Nuclei, Gas Heating, Hydrogen Clouds, Proton Irradiation, Seyfert Galaxies, Atomic Collisions, Gas Density, Gas Dynamics, Gas Ionization, Lyman Alpha Radiation, Optical Thickness, Thermodynamic Properties

Scientific paper

Physical conditions in a pure hydrogen gas heated by protons with energies greater than 200 keV (suprathermal, or fast, protons) are analyzed in terms of a plane-parallel slab geometry to determine the constraints that can be placed on a model that has been proposed to explain the broad permitted emission lines observed in the nuclei of Seyfert galaxies. Self-consistent calculations are made for various initial fast-proton energies as well as for various fast-proton and ambient-gas densities. The constraints that can be placed on these densities are determined for the cases of an optically thin gas and of an optically thick gas in which the Ly-alpha photons are degraded on the spot by two-photon emission. In both cases, the calculations indicate that conditions in the gas are fairly uniform, the electron temperatures are of the order of 10,000 K, and the degree of ionization is usually less than 10% when the gas is not completely ionized. These results are shown to constrain the possible densities of fast particles to be less than one-millionth of the ambient-gas density.

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