Circumnuclear Multiphase Gas in the Circinus Galaxy. V. The Origin of the X-Ray Polarization in the Circinus Galaxy

Abstract

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) detected X-ray polarization in the nearest Seyfert 2 galaxy, the Circinus galaxy, for the first time. To reproduce the IXPE results, we computed the degree of polarization based on two types of radiative hydrodynamic simulations: a parsec-scale three-dimensional model and a sub-parsec-scale axisymmetric model with a higher spatial resolution. In a series of papers, we confirmed that these models naturally explain the multiwavelength observations of the Circinus galaxy from radio to X-rays. We used a Monte Carlo Simulation for Astrophysics and Cosmology code to compute the linear polarization of continuum emission. We found that the degree of polarization based on the parsec-scale radiation-driven fountain model was smaller than that observed with the IXPE. The degree of polarization based on the sub-parsec-scale model depends on the hydrogen number density of the disk ( d ), and the degree of polarization obtained from our simulation is consistent with that observed with the IXPE in the case of $\mathrm{log}d/{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}\geqslant 13$ . We investigate where the photons are Compton scattered and imply that the origin of the X-ray polarization in the Circinus galaxy is the outflow inside 0.01 pc. In this case, the degree of polarization may change over a timescale of approximately 10 yr.

Keywords

• Active galactic nuclei
• Astrophysical black holes
• High energy astrophysics
• Seyfert galaxies
• Supermassive black holes
• X-ray active galactic nuclei