The physics of the interstellar medium under extreme conditions in Seyfert galaxies

塞弗特星系极端条件下星际介质的物理特性

• 批准号: 205979928
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Andreas Burkert
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Theoretische und Numerische Astrophysik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Priority Programmes
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2010-12-31 至 2015-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/205979928?language=en
• 关键词: physics; interstellar; medium; under; extreme

With the help of an optically and geometrically thick toroidal gas and dust structure around the central supermassive black hole, the so-called Unified Scheme of Active Galactic Nuclei geometrically unifies two observed classes of galaxies. Depending on the inclination of this dusty torus, the central active region is visible (Seyfert 1 galaxies) or not (Seyfert 2 galaxies). Despite successful observations with the largest available telescopes and interferometry in the mid-infrared, the detailed structure and physics of these objects as well as their origin is still poorly understood: What are the main drivers of turbulence in the nuclear regions and how do they structure the ISM and fuel the central black hole? How does nuclear activity affect the surrounding ISM? In our proposed model, nuclear star clusters in the central tens of parsec scale region provide the source for the ISM in the nucleus, which finally forms the turbulent torus on parsec scale. Thereby, our model links these two spatial regions, which are both well studied with adaptive optics and interferometric methods for a (common) sample of nearby Seyfert galaxies. The extreme conditions due to the presence of the central supermassive black hole lead to peculiar dynamical and structural properties of the turbulent ISM in galactic nuclei in comparison to our local ISM, which we propose to study in detail with three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical simulations and their comparison with observations.

借助于围绕中心超大质量黑洞的光学和几何厚的环形气体和尘埃结构，所谓的活动星系核统一方案在几何上统一了两类观察到的星系。根据这个尘埃环的倾斜度，中心活动区是可见的（塞弗特1星系）或不可见的（塞弗特2星系）。尽管使用最大的望远镜和中红外干涉测量法进行了成功的观测，但这些物体的详细结构和物理学以及它们的起源仍然知之甚少：核区域湍流的主要驱动因素是什么？它们如何构造ISM并为中心黑洞提供燃料？核活动如何影响周围的ISM？在我们提出的模型中，位于数十秒差距尺度中心区域的核星星团为核内的ISM提供了源，最终形成了秒差距尺度的湍流环。因此，我们的模型连接这两个空间区域，这两个都是很好的研究与自适应光学和干涉方法的（共同）样本附近的塞弗特星系。极端的条件下，由于中央超大质量黑洞的存在导致特殊的动力学和结构特性的湍流ISM在星系核中相比，我们的本地ISM，我们建议详细研究与三维磁流体动力学模拟和它们的比较与观测。