lundi 17 septembre 2018, par Santiago García-Burillo (OAN)
Jeudi 20 septembre 2018 à 16h00 , Lieu : Salle de conférence du bâtiment 17
We have used ALMA to image with 0.03-0.04"(2-3pc) spatial resolution the emission of a set of molecular lines, including CO(2-1), CO(3-2) and HCO+(4-3), and their underlying continuum emission in the circumnuclear disk of NGC1068, covering a region that extends from r=200pc down to the central 7-10pc-diameter torus of this prototypical Seyfert 2 galaxy, which was first detected in the 6-5 line of CO by García-Burillo et al 2016. These new observations, by using three lines spanning three orders of magnitude in densities, reveal the many ’faces’ of the molecular torus in NGC1068. The torus shows a stratified layered structure spanning a radial range that goes from r=2-3pc to r=10pc. The kinematics of molecular gas in the torus are characterized by strong non-circular motions and enhanced turbulence. Furthermore, the CO(2-1) line emission has allowed us to image the outflowing molecular gas component emerging from the torus. A far-reaching question, to be answered by ongoing ALMA surveys of nearby AGNs (NUGA, GATOS), is whether similarly perturbed and turbulent tori are expected to be found ubiquitously in Seyfert galaxies, and if their properties should change as a function of parameters like the AGN luminosity, the degree of obscuration, or the Eddington ratio.
