Related papers: Failed disk winds; a physical origin for the soft …
The nature and origin of the soft X-ray excess in radio quiet AGN is still an open issue. The interpretation in terms of thermal disc emission has been challanged by the discovery of the constancy of the effective temperature despite the…
The smooth soft X-ray excess seen in many type-1 AGN can be well described by models of absorption in partially ionized material with a large velocity dispersion, often physically interpreted as a radiatively driven accretion disk wind.…
(abridged) The soft excess seen in the X-ray spectra of many high mass accretion rate AGN can be well modelled by reflection from a partially ionised accretion disc. However, the derived parameters are often extreme, both in terms of the…
The 2-10 keV continuum of AGN is well represented by a single power law, generally attributed to a hot comptonizing medium, such as a corona above the accretion disk. At smaller energies the continuum displays an excess with respect to the…
The 2-10 keV continuum of AGN is generally well represented by a single power law. However, at smaller energies the continuum displays an excess with respect to the extrapolation of this power law, called the ''soft X-ray excess''. Until…
We discuss the origin of the soft X-ray excess seen in AGN. There are clear advantages to models where this arises from atomic processes in partially ionised material rather than where it is a true continuum component. However, current data…
The soft excess seen in many AGN is most probably due to partially ionized material moving at relativistic speeds close to the black hole. There are currently two potential geometries for this material, one where it is out of the line of…
We present a large sample of type 1 AGN spectra taken with XMM-Newton. We fit them with the relativistically blurred photoionized disc model of Ross & Fabian (2005). This model is based on an illuminated accretion disc of fluorescing and…
We discuss various ideas for the origin of the soft X-ray excess seen in AGN. There are clear advantages to models where this arises from atomic processes in partially ionised rather than where it is a true continuum component. However,…
An excess of X-ray emission below 1 keV, called soft excess, is detected in a large fraction of Seyfert 1-1.5s. The origin of this feature remains debated, as several models have been suggested to explain it, including warm Comptonization…
We present medium and high resolution X-ray spectral study of a Seyfert 1 galaxy ESO~198--G24 using a long (122 ks) XMM-Newton observation performed in February 2006. The source has a prominent featureless soft X-ray excess below $2\kev$.…
(abridged) The accretion disk in AGN is expected to produce strong outflows, in particular a UV-line driven wind. Despite providing a good fit to the data, current spectral models of the X-ray spectrum of AGN observed through an accretion…
(Abridged) Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies have low mass black holes and mass accretion rates close to (or exceeding) Eddington, so a standard blackbody accretion disc should peak in the EUV. However, the lack of true absorption…
Context. The soft excess, a surplus of X-ray photons above 2 keV with respect to a power law, is a feature of debated physical origin found in the X-ray spectra of many type-1 active galactic nuclei (AGN). The eROSITA instrument aboard the…
Over the last few years several models have been proposed to interpret the widespread soft excess observed in the X-ray spectra of type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN). In particular, reflection from the photoionized accretion disc blurred…
We investigate the nature of the soft excess below 1 keV observed in AGN. We use the XMM-Newton data of the low redshift, optically bright quasar, PG 1211+143, and we compare it with the Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxy, 1H 0707-495, which has…
The spectra of many X-ray pulsars show, in addition to a power law, a low-energy component that has often been modeled as a blackbody with kT ~ 0.1 keV. However the physical origin of this soft excess has remained a mystery. We examine a…
The origin of the soft X-ray excess in AGN has been a mystery ever since its discovery. We present how the time variability of this spectral component can point towards its origin. Using the powerful technique of multi-epoch fitting, we…
We have observed with XMM-Newton four radiatively efficient active type 1 galaxies with black hole masses < 10^6 Msun, selected optically from the SDSS. We show here that their soft X-ray spectrum exhibits a soft excess with the same…
Understanding the nature of the accretion disk, its interplay with the X-ray corona, and assessing black hole spin demographics are some open challenges in astrophysics. In this work, we examine the predictions of the standard $\alpha$-disk…