Slicing the Torus: Obscuring Structures in Quasars

Details Slicing the Torus: Obscuring Structures in Quasars Slicing the Torus: Obscuring Structures in Quasars

2012-01-24

arxiv.org/abs/1201.5101v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

8 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the proceedings of the conference "The central kiloparsec in Galactic Nuclei:Astronomy at High

Scientific paper

Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are often obscured by dust and gas. It is normally assumed that the obscuration occurs in an oblate "obscuring torus", that begins at the radius at which the most refractive dust can remain solid. The most famous form of this torus is a donut-shaped region of molecular gas with a large scale-height. While this model is elegant and accounts for many phenomena at once, it does not hold up to detailed tests. Instead the obscuration in AGNs must occur on a wide range of scales and be due to a minimum of three physically distinct absorbers. Slicing the "torus" into these three regions will allow interesting physics of the AGN to be extracted.

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