A Short-lived Rejuvenation during the Decades-long Changing-look Transition in the Nucleus of Mrk 1018

TL;DR

This study monitors the changing-look AGN Mrk 1018 over seven seasons, revealing a rapid transition linked to accretion disk instability, with detailed analysis of broad-line properties and accretion rate effects on BLR dynamics.

Contribution

First detailed multi-year spectroscopic monitoring of Mrk 1018 capturing a full-cycle changing-look transition and linking it to accretion processes and disk instability.

Findings

Detected a full-cycle changing-look transition within one year.

Found a correlation between broad-line properties and Eddington ratio.

Discovered a turnover point in the Balmer decrement.

Abstract

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs), characterized by emerging or disappearing of broad lines accompanied with extreme continuum flux variability, have drawn much attention for their potential of revealing physical processes underlying AGN evolution. We perform seven-season spectroscopic monitoring on Mrk~1018, one of the earliest identified CL-AGN. Around 2020, we detect a full-cycle changing-look transition of Mrk~1018 within one year, associated with a nucleus outburst, which likely arise from the disk instability in the transition region between the outer standard rotation-dominated disk and inner advection-dominated accretion flow. Over the past forty-five years, the accretion rate of Mrk~1018 changed 1000 times and the maximum Eddington ratio reached 0.02. By investigating the relation between broad-line properties and Eddington ratio ($L_{\rm bol}/L_{\rm Edd}$), we find strong evidence that the full-cycle type transition is regulated by accretion. There exists a turnover point in the Balmer decrement, which is observed for the first time. The broad Balmer lines change from a single peak in Type 1.0-1.2 to double peaks in Type 1.5-1.8 and the double-peak separation decreases with increasing accretion rate. We also find that the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the broad Balmer lines obeys FWHM$\propto (L_{\rm bol}/L_{\rm Edd})^{-0.27}$, as expected for a virialized BLR. The velocity dispersion $\sigma_{\rm line}$ follows a similar trend in Type 1.5-1.8, but displays a sharp increases in Type 1.0-1.2, resulting in a dramatic drop of FWHM/$\sigma_{\rm line}$. These findings suggest that a virialized BLR together with accretion-dependent turbulent motions might be responsible for the diversity of BLR phenomena across AGN population.