A Magnetic Disk-outflow Model for Changing Look Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

Abstract The timescales of the variabilities in changing look (CL) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are usually on the order of years to tens of years (some of them are even shorter than one year), which is much shorter than the viscous timescale of a standard thin accretion disk. This implies that the variabilities of CL AGNs cannot be reproduced by varying the mass accretion rate of the thin disk. In this work, we employ a magnetic accretion disk-outflow model to calculate the inflow time of the disk predominantly driven by magnetic outflows. In this model, most angular momentum of the gas in the disk is carried away by the outflows, and therefore its radial velocity can be substantially higher than that of a conventional viscous disk. Our calculations show that the inflow time of such a disk with outflows can be around several years to tens of years. The calculated spectra of the disk with outflows can fit the observed spectra of a CL AGN Mrk 1018 quite well both in the low and high states. The derived inflow time of such a disk with outflows is around 5 yr in the high state, while it becomes ∼20 yr in the low state, which is roughly consistent with the observations of the variabilities in Mrk 1018.