Application of the Disk Evaporation Model to AGNs

TL;DR

This paper applies the disk corona evaporation model, originally used for black hole X-ray binaries, to active galactic nuclei, explaining spectral states, disk truncation, and implications for broad line regions at various luminosities.

Contribution

It extends the disk evaporation model to AGNs, predicting spectral state transitions, disk truncation effects, and the existence of true Seyfert 2 galaxies at low accretion rates.

Findings

Disk truncation occurs below a critical Eddington ratio.

Inner disk radius increases as luminosity decreases.

A lower limit for broad line region observability is predicted.

Abstract

The disk corona evaporation model extensively developed for the interpretation of observational features of black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs) is applied to AGNs. Since the evaporation of gas in the disk can lead to its truncation for accretion rates less than a maximal evaporation rate, the model can naturally account for the soft spectrum in high luminosity AGNs and the hard spectrum in low luminosity AGNs. The existence of two different luminosity levels describing transitions from the soft to hard state and from the hard to soft state in BHXRBs, when applied to AGNs, suggests that AGNs can be in either spectral state within a range of luminosities. For example, at a viscosity parameter, \alpha, equal to 0.3, the Eddington ratio from the hard to soft transition and from the soft to hard transition occurs at 0.027 and 0.005 respectively. When the Eddington ratio of the AGN lies below the critical value corresponding to its evolutionary state, the disk is truncated. With decreasing Eddington ratios, the inner edge of the disk increases to greater distances from the black hole with a concomitant increase in the inner radius of the broad line region, $R_{BLR}$. The absence of an optically thick inner disk at low luminosities gives rise to region in the size of borad line-luminosity plane for which the relation $R_{BLR} \propto L^{1/2}$ inferred at high luminosities is excluded. As a result, a lower limit to the accretion rate is predicted for the observability of broad emission lines, if the broad line region is associated with an optically thick accretion disk. Thus, true Seyfert 2 galaxies may exist at very low accretion rates/luminosities. The differences between BHXRBs and AGNs in the framework of the disk corona model are discussed and possible modifications to the model are briefly suggested.