The heart of active galaxies in the infrared

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Sebastian Florian Hönig
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Astrophysik und Astronomie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2009 bis 2013
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 141272954

• Erstellungsjahr: 2013

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The coevolution of supermassive black holes in the nucleus of galaxies and their hosts has become a focus point in extragalactic astronomy. It touches the central question of how galaxies formed and evolved within cosmic times. This project focused on a better understanding of how black holes grow by studying actively accreting supermassive black holes in the nuclei of some galaxies (= AGN). With the advent of infrared (IR) interferometry, it has become possible to spatially resolve the dusty accreting structure of AGN, which resides on observed scales of few milliarcseconds to several 10s of milliarcseconds. I wanted to exploit these new facilities by applying my observational and modeling experience in order to understand how accretion on parsec scale is connected to black hole growth and how the extreme environment influences the dust. One of the major results of this project was the discovery of a parsec-scale dusty wind in the polar region of some nearby AGN. This is strong evidence that inflow to and outflow from the accretion disk is at least partly regulated by the radiation field. It was also found that the compactness of the dust distribution is tightly connected to the slope of the mid-IR emission, and both depend on the luminosity of the AGN. This is further evidence that the accretion state causes feedback reactions on its environment. In the three months reintegration period, the results were promoted by a press release that was picked up by prominent online and print media outlets.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• The dusty heart of nearby active galaxies. I. High-spatial resolution mid-IR spectro-photometry of Seyfert galaxies. A&A, 515, 23
  Hönig, S. F., Kishimoto, M., Gandhi, P., et al.
  
• The dusty heart of nearby active galaxies. II. From clumpy torus models to physical properties of dust around AGN. 2010, A&A, 523, 27
  Hönig, S. F., & Kishimoto, M.
  
• Quantifying the anisotropy in the infrared emission of powerful AGN. 2011, ApJ, 736, 26
  Hönig, S. F., Leipski, C., Antonucci, R., & Haas, M.
  
• The innermost dusty structure in active galactic nuclei as probed by the Keck interferometer. 2011, A&A, 527, 121
  Kishimoto, M., Hönig, S. F., Antonucci, R., Barvainis, R., et al.
  
• Parsec-scale dust emission from the polar region in the type 2 nucleus of NGC 424. 2012, ApJ, 755, 149
  Hönig, S. F., Kishimoto, M., Antonucci, R., et al.
  
• Dust in the polar region as a major contributor to the infrared emission of active galactic nuclei. 2013, ApJ, 771, 87
  Hönig, S. F., Kishimoto, M., Tristram, K., et al.