2015MNRAS.451.3671S

We study the orbit of a pressure-confined cloud in the broad-line region (BLR) of active galactic nuclei when the combined effects of the central gravity and anisotropic radiation pressure and the drag force are considered. The physical properties of the intercloud gas, such as its pressure and dynamic viscosity, are defined as power-law functions of the radial distance. For a drag force proportional to the relative velocity of a cloud and the background gas, a detailed analysis of the orbits is performed for different values of the input parameters. We also present analytical solutions for when the intercloud pressure is uniform and the viscosity is proportional to the inverse square of the radial distance. Our analytical and numerical solutions demonstrate decay of the orbits due to the drag force, so that a cloud will eventually fall on to the central region after the so-called time-of-flight. We found that the time-of-flight of a BLR cloud is proportional to the inverse of the dimensionless drag coefficient. If the time-of-flight becomes shorter than the lifetime of the whole system, then mechanisms for continually forming BLR clouds are needed.