English

X-ray timing analysis of the quasar PG 1211+143

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2016-01-27 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We report on a timing analysis of a new ~630ks XMM-Newton observation of the quasar, PG 1211+143. We find a well-defined X-ray power spectrum with a well-detected bend at ~7e-5 Hz, consistent with the established bend-timescale--black-hole-mass correlation for luminous, accreting black holes. We find the linear rms-flux relation commonly observed in accreting black hole systems and investigate the energy-dependence of the rms. The fractional rms is roughly constant with energy on short timescales (< 1 day; within observations) whereas there is enhanced soft band variability on long timescales (between observations typically spaced by a few days). Additionally, we also report on the optical--UV variability using the OM on-board XMM-Newton and a ~2-month-long overlapping monitoring programme with Swift. We find that, although there is little UV variability within observations (<1 day), UV variations of a few per cent exist on time-scales of ~days--weeks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.02587,
  title  = {X-ray timing analysis of the quasar PG 1211+143},
  author = {Andrew Lobban and Simon Vaughan and Ken Pounds and James Reeves},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.02587},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS (14 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables)