Oral Presentation
Obscuration properties of local AGN: an X-ray view
Presenter: Claudio Ricci (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile/Kavli Institute for Astronomy, China)
Most of the accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs) happens during a phase in which the AGN is obscured. This obscuring material could also provide the fuel that ultimately powers AGNs, so that a clear understanding of its origin and evolution is fundamental to shed light on the growth of SMBHs. However, to date it is still not clear what are the mechanisms regulating the column density and covering factor of the dusty gas that surrounds SMBHs.
X-ray emission is an ubiquitous property of Active Galactic Nuclei and, being produced within a few gravitational radii from the black hole, it can provide fundamental information about the structure and geometry of the circumnuclear material. In my talk I will present recent studies of obscuration in AGN from an X-ray perspective, focussing on its relation with the properties of the host galaxy (Ricci+17a, MNRAS) and with those of the accreting SMBHs (Ricci+17b Nature, Ricci+17c ApJS).
asiaa.sinica.edu.tw