Radiation hydrodynamics models of Active Galactic Nuclei: Beyond the central parsec

TL;DR

This paper develops large-scale radiation hydrodynamics models of AGN tori and outflows, demonstrating how anisotropic radiation influences outflow geometry and reproduces observed features like polar emission and counter-rotation.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale models of AGN tori and outflows that connect small-scale dynamics with observable large-scale features.

Findings

Anisotropic radiation causes outflows to become more polar.

Models reproduce observed polar IR emission.

Velocity maps show features like counter-rotation.

Abstract

We produce radiation hydrodynamics models of an AGN 'torus' plus outflow on 1-100 pc scales. This large scale permits direct comparison with observations, provides justification for configurations used in radiation transfer models, and tests the sensitivity of results of smaller scale dynamical models. We find that anisotropic radiation from an AGN accretion disk can cause an outflow to evolve to become more polar, agreeing with the ubiquity of polar extended mid-IR emission, and the general geometry predicted by radiative transfer models. We also find the velocity maps can reproduce many features of observations, including apparent 'counter-rotation'.