Reflection geometries in absorbed and unabsorbed AGN

Abstract

The hard X-ray emission of active galactic nuclei (AGN), and in particular, the reflection component, is shaped by the innermost and outer regions of the galactic nucleus. Our main goal is to investigate the variation of the Compton hump amongst a population of sources and correlate it with other spectral properties to constrain the source geometry. We studied the NuSTAR hard X-ray spectra of a sample of 83 AGN and performed a detailed spectral analysis of each of them. Based on their spectral shape, we divided the sample into five categories and also studied their stacked spectra. We found a stronger reflection in mildly obscured sources, which verifies the results reported in previous works. In addition, the reflection behaviour, and probably origin, varies with absorption. The accretion disc seems to be the main reflector in unabsorbed sources. A clumpy torus seems to produce most of the reflection in obscured sources. The filling factor of the clouds surrounding the active nucleus is a key parameter that drives the appearance of AGN. Finally, we found that the Fe line and the Compton hump are roughly correlated, as expected.

16 pages, 9 figures, published by A&A

References in corpus (4)

• AGN Dusty Tori: I. Handling of Clumpy Media
• NuSTAR Resolves the First Dual AGN above 10 keV in SWIFT J2028.5+2543
• A Long Look At MCG-5-23-16 With NuSTAR: I- Relativistic Reflection And Coronal Properties
• The NuSTAR Extragalactic Survey: Average broad-band X-ray spectral properties of the NuSTAR detected AGN

Cited by in corpus (9)

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• NuSTAR hard X-ray spectra of radio galaxies
• NuSTAR view of Swift/BAT AGN: The $R$-$\Gamma$ correlation
• NuSTAR Observations of Intrinsically X-ray Weak Quasar Candidates: An Obscuration-Only Scenario
• Correlation between relativistic reflection fraction and photon index in NuSTAR sample of Seyfert 1 AGN
• Observational hints on the torus obscuring gas behaviour through X-rays with NuSTAR data
• NuSTAR view of heavily absorbed AGN: The $R-N_{\text{H}}$ correlation