English

Compton Shoulder Diagnostics in Active Galactic Nuclei for Probing the Metalicity of the Obscuring Compton-Thick Tori

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2018-11-07 v2

Abstract

We analyzed the spectral shape of the Compton shoulder around the neutral Fe-Kα_\alpha line of the Compton-thick type II Seyfert nucleus of the Circinus galaxy. The characteristics of this Compton shoulder with respect to the reflected continuum and Fe-Kα_\alpha line core intensity are a powerful diagnostics tool for analyzing the structure of the molecular tori, which obscure the central engine. We applied our Monte-Carlo-based X-ray reflection spectral model to the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating data and successfully constrained the various spectral parameters independently, using only the spectral data only around the Fe-Kα_\alpha emission line. The obtained column density and inclination angle are consistent with the previous observations and the Compton-thick type II Seyfert picture. In addition, we determined the metal abundance of the molecular torus for the case of the smooth and clumpy torus to be 1.750.17+0.19^{+0.19}_{-0.17} and 1.74±\pm0.16 solar abundance, respectively. Such slightly over-solar abundance can be useful information for discussing the star formation rate in the molecular tori of active galactic nuclei.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.01088,
  title  = {Compton Shoulder Diagnostics in Active Galactic Nuclei for Probing the Metalicity of the Obscuring Compton-Thick Tori},
  author = {Masaya Hikitani and Masanori Ohno and Yasushi Fukazawa and Toshihiro Kawaguchi and Hirokazu Odaka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.01088},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

8 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal