2006/08/31 by Y. Shi, G. H. Rieke, D. C. Hines +6 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Extinction (optical mineralogy) #Feature (linguistics) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Quasar #Silicate #Unification #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/508737
published as Astrophys.J.653:127-136,2006 · Accepted for publication in ApJ, 14 pages, 5 figures. The on-line table is available at http://cztsy.as.arizona.edu/~yong/silicate_tab1.pdf
openalex publication_date 2006/12/05 · arxiv created 2006/12/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2019/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We describe observations of 9.7 μm silicate features in 97 AGNs, exhibiting a wide range of AGN types and of X-ray extinction toward the central nuclei. We find that the strength of the silicate feature correlates with the H I column density estimated from fitting the X-ray data, such that low H I columns correspond to silicate emission, while high columns correspond to silicate absorption. The behavior is generally consistent with unification models in which the large diversity in AGN properties is caused by viewing-angle-dependent obscuration of the nucleus. Radio-loud AGNs and radio-quiet quasars follow roughly the correlation between H I columns and the strength of the silicate feature defined by Seyfert galaxies. The agreement among AGN types suggests a high-level unification with similar characteristics for the structure of the obscuring material. We demonstrate the implications for unification models qualitatively with a conceptual disk model. The model includes an inner accretion disk (<0.1 pc in radius), a middle disk (0.1-10 pc in radius) with a dense diffuse component and with embedded denser clouds, and an outer clumpy disk (10-300 pc in radius).