We present the first results of the Galaxy Activity, Torus, and Outflow Survey (GATOS), a project aimed at understanding the properties of the dusty molecular tori and their connection to the host galaxy in nearby Seyfert galaxies. Our project expands the range of active galactic nuclei (AGN) luminosities and Eddington ratios covered by previous surveys of Seyferts conducted by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), allowing us to study the gas feeding and feedback cycle in a combined sample of 19 Seyferts. We used ALMA to obtain new images of the emission of molecular gas and dust using the CO(3–2) and HCO+(4–3) lines as well as their underlying continuum emission at 870 μm with high spatial resolutions (0.1″ ∼ 7 − 13 pc) in the circumnuclear disks (CND) of ten nearby (D < 28 Mpc) Seyfert galaxies selected from an ultra-hard X-ray survey. Our new ALMA observations detect 870 μm continuum and CO line emission from spatially resolved disks located around the AGN in all the sources. The bulk of the 870 μm continuum flux can be accounted for by thermal emission from dust in the majority of the targets. For most of the sources, the disks show a preponderant orientation perpendicular to the AGN wind axes, as expected for dusty molecular tori. The median diameters and molecular gas masses of the tori are ∼42 pc and ∼6 × 105 M⊙, respectively. We also detected the emission of the 4–3 line of HCO+ in four GATOS targets. The order of magnitude differences found in the CO/HCO+ ratios within our combined sample point to a very different density radial stratification inside the dusty molecular tori of these Seyferts. We find a positive correlation between the line-of-sight gas column densities responsible for the absorption of X-rays and the molecular gas column densities derived from CO toward the AGN in our sources. Furthermore, the median values of both column densities are similar. This suggests that the neutral gas line-of-sight column densities of the dusty molecular tori imaged by ALMA significantly contribute to the obscuration of X-rays. The radial distributions of molecular gas in the CND of our combined sample show signs of nuclear-scale molecular gas deficits. We also detect molecular outflows in the sources that show the most extreme nuclear-scale gas deficits in our sample. These observations find for the first time supporting evidence that the imprint of AGN feedback is more extreme in higher luminosity and/or higher Eddington ratio Seyfert galaxies.

ALMA observations have revealed nuclear dusty molecular disks/tori with characteristic sizes 15-40 pc in the few Seyferts and low luminosity AGN studied so far. These structures are generally decoupled both morphologically and kinematically from the host galaxy disk. We present ALMA observations of the CO(2-1) and CO(3-2) molecular gas transitions and associated (sub)-millimeter continua of the nearby Seyfert 1.5 galaxy NGC 3227 with angular resolutions 0.085 − 0.21 (7-15 pc). On large scales the cold molecular gas shows circular motions as well as streaming motions on scales of a few hundred parsecs associated with a large scale bar. We fitted the nuclear ALMA 1.3 mm emission with an unresolved component and an extended component. The 850 µm emission shows at least two extended components, one along the major axis of the nuclear disk and the other along the axis of the ionization cone. The molecular gas in the central region (1 ∼ 73 pc) shows several CO clumps with complex kinematics which appears to be dominated by non-circular motions. While we cannot demonstrate conclusively the presence of a warped nuclear disk, we also detected non-circular motions along the kinematic minor axis. They reach line-of-sight velocities of v − v sys = 150 − 200 km s −1 . Assuming that the radial motions are in the plane of the galaxy, then we interpret them as a nuclear molecular outflow due to molecular gas in the host galaxy being entrained by the AGN wind. We derive molecular outflow rates of 5 M yr −1 and 0.6 M yr −1 at projected distances of up to 30 pc to the northeast and southwest of the AGN, respectively. At the AGN location we estimate a mass in molecular gas of 5 × 10 5 M and an equivalent average column density N(H 2 ) = 2 − 3 × 10 23 cm −2 in the inner 15 pc. The nuclear CO(2-1) and CO(3-2) molecular gas and sub-mm continuum emission of NGC 3227 do not resemble the classical compact torus. Rather, these emissions extend for several tens of parsecs and appear connected with the circumnuclear ring in the host galaxy disk, as found in other local AGN.

We characterize for the first time the torus properties of an ultra-hard X-ray (14-195 keV) volume-limited (D L <40 Mpc) sample of 24 Seyfert (Sy) galaxies (BCS 40 sample). The sample was selected from the Swift/BAT nine month catalog. We use high angular resolution nuclear infrared (IR) photometry and N-band spectroscopy, the CLUMPY torus models and a Bayesian tool to characterize the properties of the nuclear dust. In the case of the Sy1s we estimate the accretion disk contribution to the subarcsecond resolution nuclear IR SEDs (∼0.4 ′′ ) which is, on average, 46±28, 23±13 and 11±5% in the J-, H-and K-bands, respectively. This indicates that the accretion disk templates that assume a steep fall for longer wavelengths than 1 µm might underestimate its contribution to the near-IR emission. Using both optical (broad vs narrow lines) and X-ray (unabsorbed vs absorbed) classifications, we compare the global posterior distribution of the torus model parameters. We confirm that Sy2s have larger values of the torus covering factor (C T ∼0.95) than Sy1s (C T ∼0.65) in our volumelimited Seyfert sample. These findings are independent of whether we use an optical or X-ray classification. We find that the torus covering factor remains essentially constant within the errors in our luminosity range and there is no clear dependence with the Eddington ratio. Finally, we find tentative evidence that even an ultra hard X-ray selection is missing a significant fraction of highly absorbed type 2 sources with very high covering factor tori.