A Decade-Scale Ionization Echo of Black-Hole Accretion in Galactic Nuclei

Abstract: Circumnuclear structures in active galactic nuclei respond to accretion variability over different spatial and temporal scales, but whether compact narrow-line gas responds on decade timescales has not been systematically established. We use repeat Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument spectroscopy of 473 variability-selected galactic nuclei with evidence for recent nuclear brightening. We identify 19 sources whose narrow [O III] $\lambda5007$ flux increased by more than a factor of two over rest-frame baselines of 12.0-20.4 yr, which we term narrow-line ionization echoes (NIEs). In equal-weight stacked spectra, [O III] increased by $229\pm22\%$, while lower-ionization lines remained nearly unchanged or declined, indicating an ionization-dependent response rather than uniform spectral rescaling. The NIE hosts also moved coherently toward higher excitation in optical diagnostic diagrams, with mean increases of $0.46\pm0.18$ dex in $\log([\mathrm{O III}]/\mathrm{H}β)$ and $0.58\pm0.13$ dex in $\log([\mathrm{O III}]/[\mathrm{O II}])$. Photoionization models reproduce this evolution with a higher ionization parameter and a harder AGN-like ionizing spectrum at fixed gas abundance. For 13 sources with well-defined mid-infrared outbursts, the integrated W1+W2 excess energy correlates strongly with the absolute [O III] luminosity change ($r=0.87$), linking the dust and narrow-line responses to the same nuclear event. The mid-infrared timescale and spectroscopic baseline constrain the variable [O III]-emitting gas to characteristic scales of 1.5-5.2 pc. Compact narrow-line gas therefore appears to form an intermediate, decade-scale response layer between the infrared dust echo and the long-lived extended narrow-line region.