The hypothesis of the dust origin of the Broad Line Region in Active Galactic Nuclei

TL;DR

This paper proposes that dust formation in the accretion disk atmosphere of active galactic nuclei explains the origin of the Broad Line Region, supported by a universal temperature measurement and a failed wind model.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis that dust formation causes the BLR, supported by temperature measurements and a model of failed winds, integrating irradiation effects and observational constraints.

Findings

Universal accretion disk temperature of ~995 K at Hβ formation site.

Dust formation leads to a failed wind mechanism in the BLR.

Model constrained by observations of NGC 5548.

Abstract

Strong broad emission lines are the most important signatures of active galactic nuclei. These lines allowed to discover the cosmological nature of quasars, and at present these lines allow for convenient method of weighting the black holes residing in their nuclei. However, a question remains why such strong lines form there in the first place. Specifically, in the case of Low Ionization Lines, there must be a mechanism which leads to an efficient rise of the material from the surface of the accretion disk surrounding a black hole but at the same time should not give a strong signature of the systematic outflow, as the Balmer lines are not significantly shifted with respect to the Narrow Line Region. We determine the effective temperature of the accretion disk underlying the H$\beta$ line at the basis of the time delay measured from reverberation and the simple Shakura-Sunyaev theory of accretion disks. We obtain that this temperature is universal, and equal $995 \pm 74$ K, independently from the black hole mass and accretion rate of the source. This result suggests to us that the dust formation in the disk atmosphere is responsible for the strong rise of the material. However, as the material gains height above the disk it becomes irradiated, the dust evaporates, the radiation pressure force suddently drops and the material fall back again at the disk. Therefore, a failed wind forms. In the simple version of the model the disk irradiation is neglected, but in the present paper we also discuss this irradiation and we use the observed variation of the Broad Line Region in NGC 5548 to constrain the character of this non-local non-stationary phenomenon. The current instruments cannot resolve the Broad Line Region but future instrumentation may allow to test the model directly.