Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userAGN variability at hard X-rays
150
0
0.0
(
0
)
Authors
S. Soldi
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We present preliminary results on the variability properties of AGN above 20 keV in order to show the potential of the INTEGRAL IBIS/ISGRI and Swift/BAT instruments for hard X-ray timing analysis of AGN. The 15-50 keV light curves of 36 AGN observed by BAT during 5 years show significantly larger variations when the blazar population is considered (average normalized excess variance = 0.25) with respect to the Seyfert one (average normalized excess variance = 0.09). The hard X-ray luminosity is found to be anti-correlated to the variability amplitude in Seyfert galaxies and correlated to the black hole mass, confirming previous findings obtained with different AGN hard X-ray samples. We also present results on the Seyfert 1 galaxy IC 4329A, as an example of spectral variability study with INTEGRAL/ISGRI data. The position of the high-energy cut-off of this source is found to have varied during the INTEGRAL observations, pointing to a change of temperature of the Comptonising medium. For several bright Seyfert galaxies, a considerable amount of INTEGRAL data have already been accumulated and are publicly available, allowing detailed spectral variability studies at hard X-rays.
rate research
Read More
Variability at all observed wavelengths is a distinctive property of AGN. Hard X-rays provide us with a view of the innermost regions of AGN, mostly unbiased by absorption along the line of sight. Swift/BAT offers the unique opportunity to follow, on time scales of days to years and with a regular sampling, the 14-195 keV emission of the largest AGN sample available up to date for this kind of investigation. We study the amplitude of the variations, and their dependence on sub-class and on energy, for a sample of 110 radio quiet and radio loud AGN selected from the BAT 58-month survey. About 80% of the AGN in the sample are found to exhibit significant variability on months to years time scales, radio loud sources being the most variable. The amplitude of the variations and their energy dependence are incompatible with variability being driven at hard X-rays by changes of the absorption column density. In general, the variations in the 14-24 and 35-100 keV bands are well correlated, suggesting a common origin of the variability across the BAT energy band. However, radio quiet AGN display on average 10% larger variations at 14-24 keV than at 35-100 keV and a softer-when-brighter behavior for most of the Seyfert galaxies with detectable spectral variability on month time scale. In addition, sources with harder spectra are found to be more variable than softer ones. These properties are generally consistent with a variable power law continuum, in flux and shape, pivoting at energies >~ 50 keV, to which a constant reflection component is superposed. When the same time scales are considered, the timing properties of AGN at hard X-rays are comparable to those at lower energies, with at least some of the differences possibly ascribable to components contributing differently in the two energy domains (e.g., reflection, absorption).
A number of radio galaxies has been detected by Fermi/LAT in the gamma-ray domain. In some cases, like Cen A and M 87, these objects have been seen even in the TeV range by Cherenkov telescopes. Whereas the gamma-ray emission is likely to be connected with the non-thermal jet emission, dominating also the radio band, the situation is less clear at hard X-rays. While the smoothly curved continuum emission and the overall spectral energy distribution indicate a non-thermal emission, other features such as the iron line emission and the low variability appear to be rather of Seyfert type, i.e. created in the accretion disk and corona around the central black hole. We investigate several prominent cases using combined X-ray and gamma-ray data in order to constrain the possible contributions of the jet and the accretion disk to the overall spectral energy distribution in radio galaxies. Among the three sources we study, three different origins of the hard X-ray flux can be identified. The emission can be purely non-thermal and caused by the jet, as in the case of M 87, or thermal inverse Compton emission from the Seyfert type core (Cen A), or appears to be a superposition of non-thermal and thermal inverse Compton emission, as we observe in 3C 111. Gamma-ray bright radio galaxies host all kinds of AGN cores, Seyfert 1 and 2, BL Lac objects, and also LINER.
The INTEGRAL archive developed at INAF-IASF Milano with the available public observations from late 2002 to 2016 is investigated to extract the X-ray properties of 58 High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs). This sample consists of sources hosting either a Be star (Be/XRBs) or an early-type supergiant companion (SgHMXBs), including the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs). INTEGRAL light curves (sampled at 2 ks) are used to build their hard X-ray luminosity distributions, returning the source duty cycles, the range of variability of the X-ray luminosity and the time spent in each luminosity state. The phenomenology observed with INTEGRAL, together with the source variability at soft X-rays taken from the literature, allows us to obtain a quantitative overview of the main sub-classes of massive binaries in accretion (Be/XRBs, SgHMXBs and SFXTs). Although some criteria can be derived to distinguish them, some SgHMXBs exist with intermediate properties, bridging together persistent SgHMXBs and SFXTs.
Aims: Active Galactic Nuclei are known to be variable throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. An energy domain poorly studied in this respect is the hard X-ray range above 20 keV. Methods: The first 9 months of the Swift/BAT all-sky survey are used to study the 14 - 195 keV variability of the 44 brightest AGN. The sources have been selected due to their detection significance of >10 sigma. We tested the variability using a maximum likelihood estimator and by analysing the structure function. Results: Probing different time scales, it appears that the absorbed AGN are more variable than the unabsorbed ones. The same applies for the comparison of Seyfert 2 and Seyfert 1 objects. As expected the blazars show stronger variability. 15% of the non-blazar AGN show variability of >20% compared to the average flux on time scales of 20 days, and 30% show at least 10% flux variation. All the non-blazar AGN which show strong variability are low-luminosity objects with L(14-195 keV) < 1E44 erg/sec. Conclusions: Concerning the variability pattern, there is a tendency of unabsorbed or type 1 galaxies being less variable than the absorbed or type 2 objects at hardest X-rays. A more solid anti-correlation is found between variability and luminosity, which has been previously observed in soft X-rays, in the UV, and in the optical domain.
After the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) discovered a significant brightening of the inner region of NGC 2617, we began a ~70 day photometric and spectroscopic monitoring campaign from the X-ray through near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. We report that NGC 2617 went through a dramatic outburst, during which its X-ray flux increased by over an order of magnitude followed by an increase of its optical/ultraviolet (UV) continuum flux by almost an order of magnitude. NGC 2617, classified as a Seyfert 1.8 galaxy in 2003, is now a Seyfert 1 due to the appearance of broad optical emission lines and a continuum blue bump. Such changing look Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are rare and provide us with important insights about AGN physics. Based on the Hbeta line width and the radius-luminosity relation, we estimate the mass of central black hole to be (4 +/- 1) x 10^7 M_sun. When we cross-correlate the light curves, we find that the disk emission lags the X-rays, with the lag becoming longer as we move from the UV (2-3 days) to the NIR (6-9 days). Also, the NIR is more heavily temporally smoothed than the UV. This can largely be explained by a simple model of a thermally emitting thin disk around a black hole of the estimated mass that is illuminated by the observed, variable X-ray fluxes.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
