On the Observational Difference Between the Accretion Disk-Corona Connections among Super- and Sub-Eddington Accreting Active Galactic Nuclei

Autor: Liu, Hezhen, Luo, B., Brandt, W. N., Brotherton, Michael S., Gallagher, S. C., Ni, Q., Shemmer, Ohad, Timlin III, J. D.
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abe37f
Popis: We present a systematic X-ray and multiwavelength study of a sample of 47 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with reverberation-mapping measurements. This sample includes 21 super-Eddington accreting AGNs and 26 sub-Eddington accreting AGNs. Using high-state observations with simultaneous X-ray and UV/optical measurements, we investigate whether super-Eddington accreting AGNs exhibit different accretion disk-corona connections compared to sub-Eddington accreting AGNs. We find tight correlations between the X-ray-to-UV/optical spectral slope parameter ($\alpha_{\rm OX}$) and the monochromatic luminosity at $2500~\r{A}$ ($L_{\rm 2500~\r{A}}$) for both the super- and sub-Eddington subsamples. The best-fit $\alpha_{\rm OX}-L_{\rm 2500~\r{A}}$ relations are consistent overall, indicating that super-Eddington accreting AGNs are not particularly X-ray weak in general compared to sub-Eddington accreting AGNs. We find dependences of $\alpha_{\rm OX}$ on both the Eddington ratio ($L_{\rm Bol}/L_{\rm Edd}$) and black hole mass ($M_{\rm BH}$) parameters for our full sample. A multi-variate linear regression analysis yields $\alpha_{\rm OX}=-0.13 {\rm log}(L_{\rm Bol}/L_{\rm Edd})-0.10 {\rm log}M_{\rm BH}-0.69$, with a scatter similar to that of the $\alpha_{\rm OX}-L_{\rm 2500~\r{A}}$ relation. The hard (rest-frame $>2\rm ~keV$) X-ray photon index ($\Gamma$) is strongly correlated with $L_{\rm Bol}/L_{\rm Edd}$ for the full sample and the super-Eddington subsample, but these two parameters are not significantly correlated for the sub-Eddington subsample. A fraction of super-Eddington accreting AGNs show strong X-ray variability, probably due to small-scale gas absorption, and we highlight the importance of employing high-state (intrinsic) X-ray radiation to study the accretion disk-corona connections in AGNs.
Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ
Databáze: arXiv