Dust in the torus of the AGN unified model

Abstract

In these proceedings I briefly summarize our current understanding of the dusty torus of the AGN unified model: its structure, composition, and ideas about its origin and evolution. The paper is based on an invited review talk at the 7th Meeting on Cosmic Dust, which covered dust-related topics in areas from comets to debris disks and high-redshift galaxies. This is therefore intended to be an accessible, introductory overview of the torus with some emphasis on the solid-state spectral features observed.