Dust Dynamics in AGN Winds: A New Mechanism For Multiwavelength AGN Variability

Understand

Partial dust obscuration in active galactic nuclei (AGN) has been proposed as a potential explanation for some cases of AGN variability.

• The dust-gas mixture present in AGN tori is accelerated by radiation pressure, leading to the launching of an AGN wind.
• Dust under these conditions has been shown to be unstable to a generic class of fast-growing resonant drag instabilities (RDIs).
• In this work, we present the first numerical simulations of radiation-driven outflows that explicitly include dust dynamics in conditions resembling AGN winds.