The Limited Lifetime of Self-Gravitating Accretion Disks in Galactic Centers

Globally self-gravitating accretion disks in active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been frequently discussed in the literature, but never observed. A few dozen megamasering accretion disks in AGN have been detected, which display a clear Keplerian rotation on scales of 0.1–1 pc, allowing us to estimate their masses within the sphere of influence (SoI) of the central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) to be smaller by more than a factor of 10, compared with the parent SMBH masses. Furthermore, the stellar components, deep inside the SoI, are dwarfed by the SMBH masses of M•∼few×106–few×107M⊙. Theoretically, no limit exists on sizes and masses of gaseous disks in AGN, which in principle, can exceed masses of their central compact objects. We analyze instabilities which can operate in gaseous disks, i.e., fragmentation for a locally dominant self-gravity and spontaneous breaking of axial symmetry for the globally self-gravitating disks. We invoke the gas response to the latter instability which leads to gravitational collapse, leaving a negligible mass behind and dynamically stable remnants. Consequently, the characteristic timescale for globally self-gravitating disks to exist in AGN should not exceed few rotations, tϕ∼103–4 yrs for M•∼106–8M⊙. Disk rebuilding is expected to be ≳107 yrs, meaning that probability of finding is ≲10−3, which explains their lack of detection. We conclude that observed sub-parsec disks in AGN, at least the Keplerian masering ones, can be remnants of globally self-gravitating accretion disks, and the instability timescale can be related to the duty cycle of AGN, tduty~10tϕ~104–5 yr.