A comprehensive X-ray view of the active nucleus in NGC 4258

Abstract

(Abridged) We present a detailed broadband X-ray spectrum of NGC 4258, with the goal of precisely measuring the coronal luminosity and accretion flow properties of the AGN, and track any possible variation across two decades of observations. We collect archival XMM-Newton, Chandra, Swift/BAT and NuSTAR spectroscopic observations spanning 15 years, and fit them with a suite of state of the art models, including a warped disk model which is suspected to provide the well known obscuration observed in the X-rays. We complement this information with archival results from the literature. Clear spectral variability is observed among the different epochs. The obscuring column density shows possibly periodic fluctuations on a timescale of 10 years, while the intrinsic luminosity displays a long term decrease of a factor of three in a time span of 15 years (from $L_{2-10\text{keV}}\sim 10^{41}$ erg s${}^{-1}$ in the early 2000s, to $L_{2-10\text{keV}}\sim 3\times 10^{40}$ erg s${}^{-1}$ in 2016). The average absorption-corrected X-ray luminosity $L_{2-10\text{keV}}$, combined with archival determinations of the bolometric luminosity, implies a bolometric correction $k_{\mathrm{bol}}\sim 20$, intriguingly typical for Seyferts powered by accretion through geometrically thin, radiatively efficient disks. Moreover, the X-ray photon index $\Gamma$ is consistent with the typical value of the broader AGN population. However, the accretion rate in Eddington units is very low, well within the expected RIAF regime. Our results suggest that NGC 4258 is a genuinely low-luminosity Seyfert II, with no strong indications in its X-ray emission for a hot, RIAF-like accretion flow.

Accepted for publication in A&A. 14 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Hot accretion flows in low-luminosity active galactic nuclei in NGC 4258 and NGC 7213