Where Is the Coronal Line Region in Active Galactic Nuclei?

Abstract

We report the new finding that type 1 Seyfert nuclei (S1s) have excess [FeVII]6087 emission with respect to type 2s (S2s). The S1s exhibit broad emission lines which are attributed to ionized gas within 1 pc of the black hole, whereas the S2s do not show such broad lines. The current unified model of active galactic nuclei explains this difference as that the central 1 pc region in the S2s is hidden from the line of sight by a dusty torus if we observe it from a nearly edge-on view toward the torus. Therefore, our finding implies that the coronal line region (CLR) traced by the [FeVII]6087 emission resides in the inner wall of such dusty tori. On the other hand, the frequency of occurrence of the CLR in the optical spectra is nearly the same between the S1s and the S2s. Moreover, some Seyfert nuclei exhibit a very extended (~ 1 kpc) CLR. All these observational results can be unified if we introduce a three-component model for the CLR; 1) the inner wall of the dusty torus, 2) the clumpy ionized region associated with the narrow line region at distance from ~ 10 to ~ 100 pc, and 3) the extended ionized region at distance ~ 1 kpc.