Centrifugally Driven Winds from Magnetized Accretion Disks: A New Look at the AGN Unification Scheme

Details Centrifugally Driven Winds from Magnetized Accretion Disks: A New Look at the AGN Unification Scheme Centrifugally Driven Winds from Magnetized Accretion Disks: A New Look at the AGN Unification Scheme

Dec 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992aas...181.7101k&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 181st AAS Meeting, #71.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, p.1233

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Centrifugally driven winds (CDWs) originating from the surfaces of magnetized accretion disks have been recognized as an attractive mechanism of removing the angular momentum of the accreted matter. Such winds are expected to have unique radiative properties arising from their highly stratified density and velocity structure and from their interaction with the radiation field of the compact central object. We propose that this scenario, when applied to the inner ~ 1 pc of an AGN, may account for many of the spectral characteristics of Seyfert galaxies, QSOs, and BL Lac objects, and can provide the physical basis for the Seyfert 1/Seyfert 2 unification model. According to the unification model, Seyfert 2 galaxies represent Seyfert 1 galaxies that are obscured by a dusty torus. In our picture, the torus is identified with the dusty outer regions of the disk-driven wind. We demonstrate that the wind typically carries enough momentum to lift the dust off the disk surface by gas-grain collisions. Using a Monte Carlo code, we show that the infrared emission of Seyferts and QSOs can be attributed to the reprocessing of the UV and X-ray radiation from the central region by the dust in the wind. We also point out that radiation pressure forces would flatten the dust distributions in objects with luminosities above ~ 0.01 L_Eddington, which could be the reason for the apparent paucity of narrow-line sources among high-luminosity AGNs. Finally, we examine the possibility that most of the hard X-ray absorption in Seyferts occurs in the ionized inner regions of the wind. This picture accounts naturally for the pervasive hot electron component inferred from spectropolarimetric measurements, from the widths of the broad lines, and from the X-ray properties of sources like NGC 6814. We also investigate the possibility that the ~ 0.6 keV absorption feature reported in several BL Lac objects could form in a disk-driven wind that is illuminated by a steep ionizing continuum.

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