Models of Dusty Discs in Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

One of the challenges faced by unified theories for Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is to match the observed infrared emission to that predicted for the optically and geometrically thick dusty discs believed to obscure the central source of radiation. We have used the method of Efstathiou & Rowan-Robinson (1990), generalised to take into account a distribution of grain species and sizes (Efstathiou & Rowan-Robinson 1993), to compute models that assume different density distributions. The method treats multiple scattering from grains.