Toward a Unified AGN Structure

Abstract

We present a unified model for the structure and appearance of accretion powered sources across their entire luminosity range from galactic X-ray binaries to luminous quasars, with emphasis on AGN and their phenomenology. Central to this model is the notion of MHD winds launched from the accretion disks that power these objects. These winds provide the matter that manifests as blueshifted absorption features in the UV and X-ray spectra of a large fraction of these sources; furthermore, their density distribution in the poloidal plane determines the "appearance" (i.e. the column and velocity structure of these absorption features) as a function of the observer inclination angle. This work focuses on just the broadest characteristics of these objects; nonetheless, it provides scaling laws that allow one to reproduce within this model the properties of objects spanning a very wide luminosity range and viewed at different inclination angles, and trace them to a common underlying dynamical structure. Its general conclusion is that the AGN phenomenology can be accounted for in terms of three parameters: The wind mass flux in units of the Eddington value, $\dot m$, the observer's inclination angle $\theta$ and the logarithmic slope between the O/UV and X-ray fluxes $\alpha_{OX}$. However, because of a significant correlation between $\alpha_{OX}$ and UV luminosity, we conclude that the AGN structure depends on only two parameters. Interestingly, the correlations implied by this model appear to extend to and consistent with the characteristics of galactic X-ray sources, suggesting the presence of a truly unified underlying structure for accretion powered sources.