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A Walk Through Agn Country—For the Somewhat Initiated!
Version 1
: Received: 4 July 2023 / Approved: 5 July 2023 / Online: 5 July 2023 (11:09:01 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Antonucci, R.R.J. A Walk through AGN Country—For the Somewhat Initiated! Galaxies 2023, 11, 102. Antonucci, R.R.J. A Walk through AGN Country—For the Somewhat Initiated! Galaxies 2023, 11, 102.
Abstract
Some key issues in AGN and galaxy formation are discussed. Very successful Unified Models explain much of the variety of AGN with orientation effects; ingredients are shadowing by a dusty “torus" and relativistic beaming. A spinoff result is described which is important for the formation of massive elliptical galaxies. It’s the most spectacular and unequivocal AGN feedback phenomenon known. This is the so-called “alignment effect" in powerful radio galaxies at z > 1. One of them is a BAL radio galaxy! I explain a very robust derivation of the reddening law for nuclear dust, which reveals a dearth of small grains. Then the quasistatic thin accretion disk model, thought by many to explain the energetically dominant optical/UV continuum, is thoroughly debunked. Much of this was known when the model was proposed 35 years ago. A new argument is given that trivially falsifies a huge superset of such models. It’s possible to see the central engine spectrum with the atomic and dust emission surgically removed! Few noticed this breakthrough work. The far IR dust emission in Cygnus A is 10% polarized, and so far high nuclear dust polarization is seen in all radio loud objects, but no radio quiet ones.
Keywords
Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies; galaxies: active
Subject
Physical Sciences, Astronomy and Astrophysics
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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