Radiation-driven outflows in AGNs: Revisiting feedback effects of scattered and reprocessed photons

TL;DR

This study uses advanced hydrodynamical simulations to explore how scattered and reprocessed photons from AGNs drive outflows, revealing their significant role in producing observed AGN feedback effects.

Contribution

It introduces an improved model of radiation force calculation, demonstrating the importance of re-radiation in AGN outflows, aligning simulation results with observations.

Findings

Re-radiation significantly enhances outflow mass flux and velocity.

Simulation results match observed AGN outflow properties.

Line and re-radiation forces are key to AGN feedback mechanisms.

Abstract

We perform two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of slowly rotating accretion flows in the region of $ 0.01-7\, \mathrm{pc} $ around a supermassive black holes with $ M_\mathrm{BH} = 10^{8} M_{\odot} $. The accretion flow is irradiated by the photons from the central active galactic nucleus (AGN). In addition to the direct radiation from the AGN, we have also included the "re-radiation", i.e., the locally produced radiation by Thomson scattering, line and bremsstrahlung radiation. Compare to our previous work, we have improved the calculation of radiation force due to the Thomson scattering of X-ray photons from the central AGN. We find that this improvement can significantly increase the mass flux and velocity of outflow. We have compared the properties of outflow --- including mass outflow rate, velocity, and kinetic luminosity of outflow --- in our simulation with the observed properties of outflow in AGNs and found that they are in good consistency. This implies that the combination of line and re-radiation forces is the possible origin of observed outflow in luminous AGNs.