The central region of active galactic nuclei

活跃星系核的中心区域

• 批准号: 208295850
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Rolf Chini, since 8/2019
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Astrophysik und Geophysik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2011-12-31 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/208295850?language=en
• 关键词: central; region; active; galactic; nuclei

The astronomical institutes in Bochum and Göttingen have performed a joint innovative observing project, partially funded by the DFG, to shed new light on the close surrounding of accreting black holes in 50 nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN). Our excellent echo mapping data exceed our expectations and allow us not only to derive the size of the broad-line region (BLR) and the host-subtracted AGN luminosity, but also to perform unprecedented studies of the kinematics and the geometry of the BLR with a spatial resolution hundredthousand times better than possible with conventional imaging techniques. Based on five sources analysed so far in more detail, we find indications that the BLRs are disk-like and seen nearly face-on. This leads to much larger AGN black hole masses than previously thought and challenges the widely adopted common black-hole/stellar-bulge mass relation for active and non-active galaxies. In addition, based on our dust torus reverberation mapping we derived a new explanation to solve for former discrepancies by means of geometrical foreshortening effects of the observed echo lags. We here ask support to continue this fascinating and extremely efficient project in order to- exploit the existing unpublished data - complement them where necessary by using own telescopes and guaranteed observing time- perform accretion disk echo mapping to find clues for smooth or stochastic accretion models- test our new methods at higher redshift. The data will be made publicly available and the results will be of high relevance for modern research of active and even non-active galaxies.

波鸿和哥廷根的天文研究所开展了一个联合创新观测项目，该项目部分由DFG资助，以揭示附近50个活动星系核(AGN)中吸积黑洞的紧密周围。我们出色的回波映射数据超出了我们的预期，不仅使我们能够得出宽线区域(BLR)的大小和主机减去AGN的光度，而且还可以对BLR的运动学和几何进行前所未有的研究，空间分辨率比传统成像技术高出10万倍。根据到目前为止更详细地分析的五个来源，我们发现有迹象表明，BLR是圆盘状的，几乎是正面看到的。这导致活动星系核黑洞的质量比之前认为的要大得多，并挑战了活动和非活动星系普遍采用的普通黑洞/恒星膨胀质量关系。此外，基于我们的尘埃环混响映射，我们通过观测到的回波滞后的几何缩短效应，得到了一种新的解释来解决以前的差异。我们在此请求支持，以继续这一引人入胜和极其有效的项目，以便--利用现有的未公布数据--在必要时通过使用自己的望远镜和保证的观测时间来补充它们--执行吸积盘回声映射，以寻找平滑或随机吸积模型的线索--在更高的红移测试我们的新方法。这些数据将公之于众，其结果将对活动甚至非活动星系的现代研究具有很高的相关性。