Abstract

We show that the recently observed suppression of the gap between the broad-line region (BLR) and the narrow-line region (NLR) in some active galactic nuclei (AGNs) can be fully explained by an increase of the gas density in the emitting region. Our model predicts the formation of the intermediate-line region (ILR) that is observed in some Seyfert galaxies by the detection of emission lines with intermediate-velocity FWHM ~ 700–1200 km s−1. These lines are believed to be originating from an ILR located somewhere between the BLR and NLR. As was previously proved, the apparent gap is assumed to be caused by the presence of dust beyond the sublimation radius. Our computations with the use of the cloudy photoionization code show that the differences in the shape of the spectral energy distribution from the central region of AGNs do not diminish the apparent gap in the line emission in those objects. A strong discontinuity in the line emission versus radius exists for all lines at the dust sublimation radius. However, increasing the gas density to ~1011.5 cm−3 at the sublimation radius provides the continuous line emission versus radius and fully explains the recently observed lack of apparent gap in some AGNs. We show that such a high density is consistent with the density of upper layers of an accretion disk atmosphere. Therefore, the upper layers of the disk atmosphere can give rise to the formation of observed emission-line clouds.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-27-2016

Notes/Citation Information

Published in The Astrophysical Journal, v. 831, no. 1, 68, p. 1-9.

© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

The copyright holder has granted the permission for posting the article here.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/831/1/68

Funding Information

This research was supported by Polish National Science Center grants No. 2011/03/B/ST9/03281, 2015/17/B/ST9/03422, and by Ministry of Science and Higher Education grant W30/7.PR/2013. It received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) under the grant agreement No. 312789. T.P.A. received funding from the NCAC PAS grant for PhD students. B.C. acknowledges the grant from the Foundation for Polish Science through the Master/Mistrz program 3/2012. G.J.F. thanks the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center for its hospitality and acknowledges support by NSF (1108928, 1109061, and 1412155), NASA (10-ATP10-0053, 10-ADAP10-0073, NNX12AH73G, and ATP13-0153), and STScI (HST-AR- 13245, GO-12560, HST-GO-12309, GO-13310.002-A, HST-AR-13914, and HST-AR-14286.001).

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