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Three-Dimensional Simulations of Dynamics of Accretion Flows Irradiated by a Quasar
Ryuichi Kurosawa & Daniel Proga, 2008, ApJ, submitted
Abstract
We study the axisymmetric and
non-axisymmetric, time-dependent hydrodynamics of gas that is under the
influence of the gravity of a super massive black hole (SMBH) and
the radiation force produced by a radiatively efficient flow
accreting onto the SMBH. This work is a direct extension of the
previous
axisymmetric models of AGN feedback studied by Proga to a fully 3-D
model. We have considered two cases: (1) the formation of an outflow
from the accretion of the ambient gas without rotation and (2) that
with rotation. The main goals of this study are: (1) to examine if
there is a significant difference between the models with identical
initial and boundary conditions but in different dimensionality (2-D
and 3-D), in particular, if the radiation driven outflows that were
found to be stable in 2-D remain stable in 3-D simulations, and (2) to
understand the gas dynamics in AGN. Our 3-D simulations of a
non-rotating gas show small yet noticeable non-axisymmetric small-scale
features inside the outflow. But the outflow as the whole and the
inflow do not seem to suffer from any large-scale instability. In the
rotating case, the non-axisymmetric features are very prominent,
especially in the outflow which consists of many cold dense clouds
entrained in a smoother hot component. The 3-D outflow is
non-axisymmetric due to the shear and thermal instabilities. In both
2-D and 3-D simulations, gas rotation causes several very similar
effects. For example, rotation increases the outflow thermal energy
flux, but reduces the outflow mass and kinetic energy fluxes and the
outflow collimation. Moreover, rotation leads to time variability and
fragmentation of the outflow in the radial and latitudinal
directions. However, the time variability in the mass and energy
fluxes is reduced in the 3-D case because of the outflow fragmentation
in the azimuthal direction. The virial mass estimated from the
kinematics of the cold clouds found in our 3-D simulations of rotating
gas underestimates the actual mass used in the simulations by about
40%. The opening angles (~30 deg.) of the bi-conic
outflows found in the models with rotating gas are very similar to that
of the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 4151 (~33 deg.). Although our
models show that a hot outflow decelerating at large radii, they do not
show what has been observed in some Seyfert galaxies, i.e., strong
deceleration of the cold clouds. Instead the simulated clouds reach a
constant velocity near the outer boundary, and show only a hint of
deceleration. We suspect that the lack of clearly decelerating cold
clouds is due to the relatively small simulation box size and the
relatively low gas density used in our models.
Preprint
- Will be available here after the paper is accepted.
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Movies
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Parameters
for the central black hole
M_BH= 10^8 Msun,
Mdot=1.6Msun/yr, L_BH=2x10^12Lsun
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