Probing Dynamics and Thermal Properties Inside Molecular Tori with CO Rovibrational Absorption Lines

Abstract

A recent hydrodynamic model, the radiation-driven fountain model (Wada et al. 2016), presented a dynamical picture that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) tori sustain their geometrical thickness by gas circulation around AGNs, and previous papers have confirmed that this picture is consistent with multiwavelength observations of nearby Seyfert galaxies. Recent near-infrared observations implied that CO rovibrational absorption lines (ΔJ = ± 1, v = 0 − 1, λ ∼ 4.7 μm) could probe the physical properties of the inside tori. However, the origin of the CO absorption lines has been under debate. In this paper, we investigate the origin of the absorption lines and conditions for detecting them by performing line radiative transfer calculations based on the radiation-driven fountain model. We find that CO rovibrational absorption lines are detected at inclination angles θ obs = 50°–80°. At the inclination angle θ obs = 77°, we observe multi-velocity components: inflow (v LOS = 30 km s−1), systemic (v LOS = 0 km s−1), and outflows (v LOS = −75, − 95, and −105 km s−1). The inflow and outflow components (v LOS = 30 and −95 km s−1) are collisionally excited at the excitation temperatures of 186 and 380 K up to J = 12 and 4, respectively. The inflow and outflow components originate from the accreting gas on the equatorial plane at 1.5 pc from the AGN center and the outflowing gas driven by AGN radiation pressure at 1.0 pc, respectively. These results suggest that CO rovibrational absorption lines can provide us with the velocities and kinetic temperatures of the inflow and outflow in the inner few parsec region of AGN tori, and the observations can probe the gas circulation inside the tori.