Fast Inflowing Ionized Absorber Tracing the Gas Dynamics at Subparsec Scale around Mrk 3

Abstract Accretion onto a supermassive black hole can release energy via radiation, jets, or winds, providing feedback effects on the circumnuclear gas environment. However, not all active galactic nuclei exhibit clear signatures of such feedback, and the dynamics of accreting gas on the inner subparsec scales remains poorly understood. Using high-resolution Chandra X-ray grating spectra of Mrk 3, we detect a fast inflowing ionized absorber characterized by redshifted Fe XXV and Fe XXVI absorption lines with confidence level in the 94%–99.6% range. Photoionization modeling reveals the inflowing absorber is located at ≲0.04–0.74 pc, with redshifted velocity decreasing from 6.1 ± 0.5 × 10 3 km s −1 to 3.4 ± 0.3 × 10 3 km s −1 over 11 yr. Only ∼0.6%–3% of the inflowing material is estimated to reach the event horizon. This direct evidence of subparsec scale fueling inflow bridges the gap between the torus and the outer accretion disk. Additionally, a 0.86 keV gas component with subsolar metallicity ( Z ∼ 0.22), outflowing at a velocity of ∼330 km s −1 , is detected in the soft X-ray band with the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer, probably corresponding to a shocked interstellar medium in the narrow-line region (NLR). The simultaneous presence of the apparent decelerating subparsec inflow and the NLR outflow favors a coherent scenario where a putative disk wind or broad-line region clouds may impede or even eject the accretion material, although other possibilities cannot be fully excluded.