Suspended and restored activities of A Nearby Super Massive Black Hole

Abstract

The discovery of spectral type transition of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), the so-called changing-look(CL) phenomenon, challenges the widely accepted AGN paradigm, not only in the orientation based Unified Model, but also in the standard disk model. In past decades, only a couple of nearby repeat "changing-look" active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs) have been identified. Here we report spectroscopic observations of UGC 3223 over the course of 18 years, from 2001 onwards. Combining the spectrum taken in 1987 by Stirpe, we have witnessed its type transitions from $1.5\to 2.0\to 1.8$ over 32 years, and captured a long-lived (at least 10 years) thorough "turn-off" state with a spectrum typical of a Seyfert 2 galaxy. The long-term thorough "turn-off" state probably suggests a once-dormant and an awakening central engine in UGC3223. We argue the (dis)appearance of the broad Balmer emission lines can be explained by the disk-wind BLR model given the evolution of the calculated Eddington ratio of accretion of the supermassive black hole.

8 pages, 4 figures and 1 table, accepted for publication in AJ (matches accepted version). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1910.02392

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• A magnetic accretion disk-outflow model for changing look active galactic nuclei
• The effects of large-scale magnetic fields on the model for repeating changing-look AGNs
• Probing the disk-corona systems and broad line regions of changing-look quasars with X-ray and optical observations
• B3\,0749+460A: A New "Changing-Look" Active Galactic Nucleus Associated with X-ray Spectral Slope Variations