The blast wave model for AGN feedback: Effects on AGN obscuration

We compute the effect of galactic absorption on active galactic nucleus (AGN) emission in a cosmological context by including a physical model for AGN feeding and feedback in a semianalytic model of galaxy formation. This is based on galaxy interactions as triggers for AGN accretion and on expanding blast waves as a mechanism to propagate outwards the AGN energy injected into the interstellar medium at the center of galaxies. We first test our model against the observed number density of AGNs with different intrinsic luminosities as a function of redshift. The model yields a "downsizing'' behavior in close agreement with the observed one for z less than or similar to 2. At higher redshifts, the model predicts an overall abundance of AGNs (including Compton-thick sources) larger than the observed Compton-thin sources by a factor of approximate to 2 for z greater than or similar to 2 and L-X <= 10(44) erg s(-1). Thus, we expect that at such luminosities and redshifts, Comptonthick sources contribute to about 1/2 of the total AGN population. We then investigate the dependence of the absorbing column density N-H associated with cold galactic gas (and responsible for the Compton-thin component of the overall obscuration) on AGN luminosity and redshift. We find that the absorbed fraction of AGNs with N-H >= 10(22) cm(-2) decreases with luminosity for z <= 1. In addition, the total (integrated over luminosity) absorbed fraction increases with redshift up to z approximate to 2, and saturates to the value approximate to 0.8 at higher redshifts. Finally, we predict that the luminosity dependence of the absorbed fraction of AGNs with L-X <= 3 x 10(44) erg s(-1) will weaken with increasing redshift. We compare our results with recent observations and discuss their implications in the context of cosmological models of galaxy formation.