The AGN dusty torus as a clumpy two-phase medium: radiative transfer modeling with SKIRT

TL;DR

This paper models the AGN dusty torus as a clumpy two-phase medium using radiative transfer simulations, providing insights into spectral energy distributions and addressing near-infrared emission excess.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-phase clumpy model of the AGN dusty torus and compares it with other models using SKIRT radiative transfer simulations.

Findings

Two-phase model naturally explains near-infrared excess.

Comparison shows differences between clumpy, two-phase, and smooth models.

Modeling results match observed spectral features of AGN tori.

Abstract

We modeled the AGN dusty torus as a clumpy two-phase medium, with high-density clumps embedded in a low-density interclump dust. To obtain spectral energy distributions and images of the torus at different wavelengths, we employed the 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code SKIRT. Apart from the grid of two-phase models, we calculated the corresponding sets of clumps-only models and models with a smooth dust distribution for comparison. We found that the most striking feature of the two-phase model is that it might offer a natural solution to the common issue reported in a number of papers -- the observed excess of the near-infrared emission.