We studied the absorption features of CO lines against the continuum originating from the heated dust in the obscuring tori around active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We investigated the formation of absorption lines corresponding to the CO rotational transitions using three-dimensional non-LTE line transfer simulations considering the dust thermal emission. As in Papers I–III of this series, we performed post-processed radiative transfer calculations using the “radiation-driven fountain model” (Wada et al. 2016), which yields a geometrically thick obscuring structure around the nucleus. This model is consistent with the spectral energy distribution of the nearest type-2 Seyfert galaxy, the Circinus galaxy. We found that the continuum-subtracted channel maps of J = 4−3 and higher transitions show absorption regions along the disk midplane for an edge-on viewing angle. The spectra consist of multiple absorption and emission features, reflecting the internal inhomogeneous and turbulent structure of the torus. The deepest absorption feature is caused by the gas on the near side of the torus between r = 10 and 15 pc, which is located in front of the AGN-heated dust inside r ≃ 5 pc. We also found that a spatial resolution of 0.5–1.0 pc is necessary to resolve the absorption features. Moreover, the inclination angle must be close to the edge-on angle (i.e., ≳85°) to observe the absorption features. The findings of the present study imply that combining our radiation-hydrodynamic model with high-resolution observations of CO (7–6) by ALMA can provide new information about the internal structure of the molecular tori in nearby AGNs.

A recent hydrodynamic model, the radiation-driven fountain model (Wada et al. 2016), presented a dynamical picture that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) tori sustain their geometrical thickness by gas circulation around AGNs, and previous papers have confirmed that this picture is consistent with multiwavelength observations of nearby Seyfert galaxies. Recent near-infrared observations implied that CO rovibrational absorption lines (ΔJ = ± 1, v = 0 − 1, λ ∼ 4.7 μm) could probe the physical properties of the inside tori. However, the origin of the CO absorption lines has been under debate. In this paper, we investigate the origin of the absorption lines and conditions for detecting them by performing line radiative transfer calculations based on the radiation-driven fountain model. We find that CO rovibrational absorption lines are detected at inclination angles θ obs = 50°–80°. At the inclination angle θ obs = 77°, we observe multi-velocity components: inflow (v LOS = 30 km s−1), systemic (v LOS = 0 km s−1), and outflows (v LOS = −75, − 95, and −105 km s−1). The inflow and outflow components (v LOS = 30 and −95 km s−1) are collisionally excited at the excitation temperatures of 186 and 380 K up to J = 12 and 4, respectively. The inflow and outflow components originate from the accreting gas on the equatorial plane at 1.5 pc from the AGN center and the outflowing gas driven by AGN radiation pressure at 1.0 pc, respectively. These results suggest that CO rovibrational absorption lines can provide us with the velocities and kinetic temperatures of the inflow and outflow in the inner few parsec region of AGN tori, and the observations can probe the gas circulation inside the tori.