English

A Search for X-ray/UV Correlation in the Reflection-Dominated Seyfert 1 Galaxy Mrk 1044

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2023-12-13 v1

Abstract

Correlated variability between coronal X-rays and disc optical/UV photons provides a very useful diagnostic of the interplay between the different regions around an active galactic nucleus (AGN) and how they interact. AGN that reveal strong X-ray reflection in their spectra should normally exhibit optical/UV to X-ray correlation consistent with reprocessing -- where the optical/UV emission lag behind the X-rays. While such correlated delay has been seen in some sources, it has been absent in others. \rm{Mrk~1044} is one such source that has been known to reveal strong X-ray reflection in its spectra. In our analysis of three long \textit{XMM-Newton} and several \textit{Swift} observations of the source, we found no strong evidence for correlation between its UV and X-ray lightcurves both on short and long time scales. Among other plausible causes for the non-detection, we posit that higher X-ray variability than UV and strong general relativistic effects close to the black hole may also be responsible. We also present results from the spectral analysis based on \textit{XMM-Newton} and \textit{NuSTAR} observations, which show the strong soft X-ray excess and iron Kα\alpha line in the 0.3--50 keV spectrum that can be described by relativistic reflection.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.11552,
  title  = {A Search for X-ray/UV Correlation in the Reflection-Dominated Seyfert 1 Galaxy Mrk 1044},
  author = {Samuzal Barua and Oluwashina K. Adegoke and Ranjeev Misra and Pramod Pawar and V. Jithesh and Biman J. Medhi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.11552},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Accepted for Publication in APJ, 13 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables