Bibcode
Ramos Almeida, C.
Bibliographical reference
Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VIII, Proceedings of the XI Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society held on September 8-12, 2014, in Teruel, Spain, ISBN 978-84-606-8760-3. A. J. Cenarro, F. Figueras, C. Hernández-Monteagudo, J. Trujillo Bueno, and L. Valdivielso (eds.), p. 132-141
Advertised on:
5
2015
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
The unified model for Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) accounts for a
variety of observational differences in terms of viewing geometry alone.
However, from the fitting of high spatial resolution infrared (IR) data
with clumpy torus models, it has been hinted that the immediate dusty
surroundings of Type-1 and 2 Seyfert nuclei might be intrinsically
different in terms of covering factor (torus width and number of
clouds). Moreover, these torus covering factors also showed variations
among objects belonging to the same type, in contradiction with simple
unification. Interestingly, these intrinsic differences in Seyfert tori
could explain, for example, the lack of broad optical lines in the
polarized spectra of about half of the brightest Seyfert 2 galaxies. On
the other hand, recent IR interferometry studies have revealed that, in
at least four Seyfert galaxies, the mid-IR emission is elongated in the
polar direction. These results are difficult to reconcile with unified
models, which claim that the bulk of the mid-IR emission comes from the
torus. In this invited contribution I summarize the latest results on
high angular resolution IR studies of AGN, which constitute a crucial
test for AGN unification. These results include those from the
mid-infrared instrument CanariCam on the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS
(GTC), which are starting to be published by the CanariCam AGN team, Los
Piratas (https://sites.google.com/site/piratasrelatedpublications).