22 Newly Identified Repeating Changing-look AGNs and Evidence for Extreme Broad-line Region Breathing

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL AGNs) show the appearance or disappearance of broad emission lines on timescales of years. Among them, the repeating CL (RCL) AGNs may provide a clear clue for our understanding of the CL transitions because the same nucleus crosses some physical boundaries more than once. We search for RCL AGNs in known CL-AGN samples using long-term multi-band light curves, and selected 34 candidates for spectroscopic follow-up. We confirm 25 RCL AGNs, including 22 newly identified cases. Properties of these RCL AGNs are analyzed. The observed rest-frame intervals of the second transitions are mostly 3--4 yr, while the variations of the optical light curves suggest that some transitions might occur on timescales of several months. The latest spectra show that the on/off states correspond to higher/lower Eddington-ratio, in the expected direction relative to the parent CL-AGN samples. As seven RCL AGNs are well covered by nearly continuous single-band light curves, their on/off states can be found to follow multi-year optical excursions, and their Eddington ratios vary consistently with the photometric changes. We also find that the H beta-only transitions occur at higher Eddington ratios than the transitions involving both H alpha and H beta, suggesting a line-dependent Broad-Line-Region (BLR) visibility threshold. These results support a picture in which different accretion-flow processes drive reversible changes in the central ionizing emissions, while the observed RCL transitions are produced by the BLR breathing across line-dependent visibility thresholds.