X-Ray Coronal Properties of Swift/BAT-selected Seyfert 1 Active Galactic Nuclei
Kamraj N, Brightman M, Harrison FA, Stern D, Garcia JA, Balokovic M, Ricci C, Koss MJ, Mejia-Restrepo JE, Oh K, Powell MC, Urry CM (2022)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2022
Journal
Book Volume: 927
Journal Issue: 1
Abstract
The corona is an integral component of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) which produces the bulk of the X-ray emission above 1-2 keV. However, many of its physical properties and the mechanisms powering this emission remain a mystery. In particular, the temperature of the coronal plasma has been difficult to constrain for large samples of AGNs, as constraints require high-quality broadband X-ray spectral coverage extending above 10 keV in order to measure the high-energy cutoff, which provides constraints on the combination of coronal optical depth and temperature. We present constraints on the coronal temperature for a large sample of Seyfert 1 AGNs selected from the Swift/BAT survey using high-quality hard X-ray data from the NuSTAR observatory combined with simultaneous soft X-ray data from Swift/XRT or XMM-Newton. When applying a physically motivated, nonrelativistic disk-reflection model to the X-ray spectra, we find a mean coronal temperature kT ( e ) = 84 +/- 9 keV. We find no significant correlation between the coronal cutoff energy and accretion parameters such as the Eddington ratio and black hole mass. We also do not find a statistically significant correlation between the X-ray photon index, Gamma, and Eddington ratio. This calls into question the use of such relations to infer properties of supermassive black hole systems.
Involved external institutions
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
United States (USA) (US)
Yale University
United States (USA) (US)
Diego Portales University / Universidad Diego Portales
Chile (CL)
Eureka Scientific
United States (USA) (US)
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Germany (DE)
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)
Korea, Republic of (KR)
Stanford University
United States (USA) (US)
United States (USA) (US)
Yale University
United States (USA) (US)
Diego Portales University / Universidad Diego Portales
Chile (CL)
Eureka Scientific
United States (USA) (US)
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Germany (DE)
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)
Korea, Republic of (KR)
Stanford University
United States (USA) (US)
How to cite
APA:
Kamraj, N., Brightman, M., Harrison, F.A., Stern, D., Garcia, J.A., Balokovic, M.,... Urry, C.M. (2022). X-Ray Coronal Properties of Swift/BAT-selected Seyfert 1 Active Galactic Nuclei. Astrophysical Journal, 927(1). https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac45f6
MLA:
Kamraj, Nikita, et al. "X-Ray Coronal Properties of Swift/BAT-selected Seyfert 1 Active Galactic Nuclei." Astrophysical Journal 927.1 (2022).
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