A Modified 3D Biconical Outflow Model: Spatial Constraints on AGN-driven Outflows

TL;DR

This study introduces a modified 3D biconical outflow model with a rotating disk component to better understand AGN-driven outflows, constraining their properties and sizes through simulations and observations.

Contribution

It presents a new outflow model incorporating rotation, providing improved constraints on outflow velocities and sizes in local AGNs, and highlights the impact of seeing effects on size measurements.

Findings

Most AGNs have moderate launching velocities.

A small percentage (2-5%) exhibit strong outflows with velocities up to 1500 km/s.

Seeing effects can lead to overestimation of outflow sizes.

Abstract

We present a modified outflow model and its application to constrain ionized outflow properties of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). By adding a rotating disk component to the biconical outflow model of Bae & Woo, we find that models with a rotating disk require faster launching velocities ($\lesssim$ 1500 km s$^{-1}$) than outflow-only models to be consistent with the observed gas kinematics of local type 2 AGNs. We perform Monte Carlo simulations to reproduce the observed distribution of gas kinematics of a large sample ($\sim$ 39,000), constraining the launching velocity and opening angle. While the launching velocity is moderate for the majority of the local AGNs, the notable cases of 2 - 5 % show strong outflows with $V_{max} \sim 1000-1500$ km s$^{-1}$. By examining the seeing effect based on the mock integral field unit data, we find that the outflow sizes measured based on velocity widths tend to be overestimated when the angular size of the outflow is comparable to or smaller than the seeing. This result highlights the need for more careful treatments of the seeing effect in the outflow size measurement, yet it still supports the lack of global feedback by gas outflows for local AGNs.