Studying the relationship between X-ray emission and accretion in AGN using the XMM–Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey
We study the link between the X-ray emission in radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the accretion rate on the central supermassive black hole using a statistically well-defined and representative sample of 71 type 1 AGN extracted from the XMM–Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey. We search an...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2013 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Cantabria (UC) |
| Repositorio: | UCrea Repositorio Abierto de la Universidad de Cantabria |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.unican.es:10902/4086 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10902/4086 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Galaxies: active Galaxies: nuclei Quasars: general X-rays: galaxies |
| Sumario: | We study the link between the X-ray emission in radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the accretion rate on the central supermassive black hole using a statistically well-defined and representative sample of 71 type 1 AGN extracted from the XMM–Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey. We search and quantify the statistical correlations between some fundamental parameters that characterize the X-ray emission, i.e. the X-ray spectral slope, Γ, and the X-ray ‘loudness’, and the accretion rate, both absolute (Ṁ) and normalized to the Eddington luminosity (Eddington ratio, λ). We parametrize the X-ray loudness using three different quantities: the bolometric correction Kbol, the two-point spectral index αOX and the disc/corona luminosity ratio. We find that the X-ray spectral index depends on the normalized accretion rate while the ‘X-ray loudness’ depends on both the normalized and the absolute accretion rate. The dependence on the Eddington ratio, in particular, is probably induced by the Γ – λ correlation. The two proxies usually adopted in the literature to quantify the X-ray loudness of an AGN, i.e. Kbol and αOX, behave differently, with Kbol being more sensitive to the Eddington ratio and αOX having a stronger dependence with the absolute accretion. The explanation of this result is likely related to the different sensitivity of the two parameters to the X-ray spectral index. |
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