Speaker
Description
Most Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are thought to contain a molecular and dusty torus that surrounds the accretion disk and obscures the AGN. The high angular resolution of the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) allows us to resolve these tori for the first time, opening up the road to answering some long-held questions. One such question is the dynamics of tori and their surrounding structures: how are tori are formed? How are they fed? And how do they lose this material through outflows launched near the accretion disk?
In this talk, I will present high-resolution (down to 13 mas/0.3 pc) ALMA observations of the nearest Seyfert 2 type AGN located in the Circinus galaxy. These observations fully resolve the torus (size 2.4 pc) and show spiral structure in the surrounding circumnuclear disk (size ~28 pc), with two of these spirals connecting to the torus. We argue that this spirals structure is responsible for the inward transport of material to the torus and we constrain the associated feeding rate to be 0.7-15 M$_{\odot}$/yr, which suffices to fuel the AGN and the nuclear outflows. In the direction perpendicular to the disk, we reveal the morphology of the ionized outflow cone, for which we measure a launching radius of 0.16 pc, putting constraints on the still unknown launching mechanism.
| Talk category | NOVA Network 1 |
|---|---|
| Preference for a talk or poster | Talk |
