The physical mechanism of radio-quiet turn-on changing-look active galactic nuclei

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Autori principali: Li, Shuang-Liang, Cao, Xinwu
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Li, Shuang-Liang
Cao, Xinwu
author_facet Li, Shuang-Liang
Cao, Xinwu
contents It is suggested that the variation of mass accretion rate in accretion disk may be responsible for the occurrence of most changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL AGNs). However, the viscous timescale of a thin disk is far longer than the observed timescale of CL AGNs. Though this problem can be resolved by introducing the large-scale magnetic field, the mechanism for radio-quiet CL AGNs with weak/absent large-scale magnetic field remains a mystery. In this work, we assume that the thin accretion disk is collapsed from the inner advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) instead of substituting by the outer thin disk through advection. This idea is tested by comparing the cooling timescale ($t_{\rm cool}$) of an ADAF with the observed timescale ($t_{\rm tran}$) of turn-on CL AGNs. We compile a sample of 102 turn-on CL AGNs from the archived data and calculate the cooling timescale of an ADAF with the critical mass accretion rate based on some conventional assumptions. It is found that $t_{\rm cool}$ is much shorter than $t_{\rm tran}$ in most of the CL AGNs, which validates our assumption though $t_{\rm cool}$ is not consistent with $t_{\rm tran}$ ($t_{\rm cool}<t_{\rm tran}$). However, this is reasonable since most of the CL AGNs were observed only two times, indicating that the observed timescale $t_{\rm tran}$ is the maximum value because the changing-look can indeed happen before the second observation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_03324
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The physical mechanism of radio-quiet turn-on changing-look active galactic nuclei
Li, Shuang-Liang
Cao, Xinwu
Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
It is suggested that the variation of mass accretion rate in accretion disk may be responsible for the occurrence of most changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL AGNs). However, the viscous timescale of a thin disk is far longer than the observed timescale of CL AGNs. Though this problem can be resolved by introducing the large-scale magnetic field, the mechanism for radio-quiet CL AGNs with weak/absent large-scale magnetic field remains a mystery. In this work, we assume that the thin accretion disk is collapsed from the inner advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) instead of substituting by the outer thin disk through advection. This idea is tested by comparing the cooling timescale ($t_{\rm cool}$) of an ADAF with the observed timescale ($t_{\rm tran}$) of turn-on CL AGNs. We compile a sample of 102 turn-on CL AGNs from the archived data and calculate the cooling timescale of an ADAF with the critical mass accretion rate based on some conventional assumptions. It is found that $t_{\rm cool}$ is much shorter than $t_{\rm tran}$ in most of the CL AGNs, which validates our assumption though $t_{\rm cool}$ is not consistent with $t_{\rm tran}$ ($t_{\rm cool}<t_{\rm tran}$). However, this is reasonable since most of the CL AGNs were observed only two times, indicating that the observed timescale $t_{\rm tran}$ is the maximum value because the changing-look can indeed happen before the second observation.
title The physical mechanism of radio-quiet turn-on changing-look active galactic nuclei
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03324