AGN light echoes and the accretion disc self-gravity limit

Open Access
Authors
Publication date 04-2022
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume | Issue number 511 | 2
Pages (from-to) 1992-1998
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (API)
Abstract Accretion disc theory predicts that an AGN disc becomes self-gravitating and breaks up into stars at an outer radius Rsg ≃ 12 light-days, with effectively no free parameter. We present evidence that the longest observed AGN light echoes are all close to 12 d in the AGN rest frames. These observations give a stringent test of the AGN disc theory. Further monitoring should offer insight into the formation angular momentum of the gas forming the disc. For distant AGN, observed lags significantly longer than 12 d give lower limits on their redshifts.
Document type Article
Note This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2022 The Author(s) published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac155
Other links https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022MNRAS.511.1992L/abstract
Downloads
Permalink to this page
Back