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Possible Evidence for Truncated Thin Disks in the Low-Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei M81 and NGC 4579

Astrophysics 2009-10-31 v1

Abstract

M81 and NGC 4579 are two of the few low-luminosity active galactic nuclei which have an estimated mass for the central black hole, detected hard X-ray emission, and detected optical/UV emission. In contrast to the canonical ``big blue bump,'' both have optical/UV spectra which decrease with increasing frequency in a νLν\nu L_\nu plot. Barring significant reddening by dust and/or large errors in the black hole mass estimates, the optical/UV spectra of these systems require that the inner edge of a geometrically thin, optically thick, accretion disk lies at roughly 100 Schwarzschild radii. The observed X-ray radiation can be explained by an optically thin, two temperature, advection-dominated accretion flow at smaller radii.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9909193,
  title  = {Possible Evidence for Truncated Thin Disks in the Low-Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei M81 and NGC 4579},
  author = {Eliot Quataert and Tiziana Di Matteo and Ramesh Narayan and Luis C. Ho},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9909193},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

emulateapj.sty, to appear in ApJ Letters