What Can We Learn from the Smallest AGN?

Abstract

Quite a few things. In particular, reverberation mapping of NGC 4395, the lowest luminosity type 1 Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN, L_bol~10^40 erg/s) revealed a size of only ~1 light hour for the C IV broad line region (BLR), which is by far the smallest BLR. This, together with a similar determination of a size of ~200 light days in a luminous quasar (Kaspi et al. 2007), suggests that the R_BLR\propto L^1/2 relation holds over a range of 10^7 in L. This relation was suggested to result from dust sublimation, which sets R_BLR. This suggestion was beautifully confirmed recently by the dust reverberation results of Suganuma et al. (2006). The R_BLR\propto L^1/2 relation implies that the broad lines width increases with decreasing luminosity according to v\propto L^-1/4. But, there is an observational cutoff at v~25,000 km/s, and thus below a certain threshold L the BLR would not be detectable. Such objects constitute the so-called "true type 2" AGN (e.g. most FR I radio galaxies). The physical origin of the BLR gas is not established yet, but high quality Keck spectra of the Halpha profile in NGC 4395 rule out a clumped distribution, and indicate that the gas resides in a smooth flow, most likely in a thick rotationally supported configuration. The Halpha line also reveals extended exponential wings, which are well modeled by electron scattering within the BLR emitting gas. Such wings can be used as a direct probe of the BLR temperature and optical depth.