AGN Light Echoes and the Accretion Disc Self-Gravity Limit

Abstract

Accretion disc theory predicts that an AGN disc becomes self-gravitating and breaks up into stars at an outer radius $R_{\mathrm{sg}}$ ~ 12 light-days, with effectively no free parameter. We present evidence that the longer observed AGN light echoes are all close to 12d in the AGN rest frames. These observations give a stringent test of AGN disc theory. Further monitoring should offer insight into the formation angular momentum of the gas forming the disc. For distant AGN, observed lags significantly longer than 12d give lower limits on their redshifts.

8 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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