- Speaker: Eduardo Gutiérrez
- Start Time:
- End Time:
- Location: Zoom
- Type: Lunch Talk
Many low-redshift active galactic nuclei harbour a supermassive black hole accreting matter at low or medium rates. At such rates, the accretion flow consists of an outer cold optically thick disk, plus an inner hot, low density, advection-dominated flow. In the latter component, charged particles can be accelerated to high energies by various mechanisms. In this work, we develop a semi-analytical model consisting of a thin Shakura-Sunyaev disk plus an inner hot accretion flow or corona, modelled as a radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF), and investigate the non-thermal processes that take place within the flow. We solve the transport equations for protons, electrons and secondary particles, and estimate the spectral energy distributions resulting from non-thermal interactions between them and the fields in the source. We cover a variety of scenarios, from low accretion rates up to 10% of the Eddington limit, and identify the relevant cooling mechanisms in each case. The presence of hadrons in the hot flow is determinant of the spectral shape, giving rise to secondary particles and gamma-ray cascades. Finally, we apply our model to the source IC 4329A, confirming earlier results which showed evidence of non-thermal particles in the corona.
