The origin of the vanishing soft X-ray excess in the changing-look Active Galactic Nucleus Mrk 590

Abstract

We have studied the nature and origin of the soft X-ray excess detected in the interesting changing-look AGN (CLAGN) Mrk~590 using two decades of multi-wavelength observations from \xmm{}, \suzaku{}, \swift{} and \nustar{}. In the light of vanishing soft excess in this CLAGN, we test two models, "the warm Comptonization" and "the ionized disk reflection" using extensive UV/X-ray spectral analysis. Our main findings are: (1) the soft X-ray excess emission, last observed in 2004, vanished in 2011, and never reappeared in any of the later observations, (2) we detected a significant variability ($\sim 300\%$) in the observed optical-UV and power-law flux between observations with the lowest state ($L_{\mathrm{bol}}=4.4\times 10^{43}erg{s}^{-1}$, in 2016) and the highest state ($L_{\mathrm{bol}}=1.2\times 10^{44}erg{s}^{-1}$, in 2018), (3) the UV and power-law fluxes follow same temporal pattern, (4) the photon index showed a significant variation ($\Gamma =1.88_{-0.08}^{+0.02}$ and $\Gamma =1.58_{-0.03}^{+0.02}$ in 2002 and 2021 respectively) between observations, (5) no Compton hump was detected in the source spectra but a narrow Fe$K_{\alpha }$ line is present in all observations, (6) we detected a high-energy cut-off in power-law continuum ($92_{-25}^{+55}\mathrm{keV}$ and $60_{-08}^{+10}\mathrm{keV}$) with the latest \nustar{} observations, (7) the warm Comptonization model needs an additional diskbb component to describe the source UV bump, (8) there is no correlation between the Eddington rate and the soft excess as found in other changing-look AGNs. We conclude that given the spectral variability in UV/X-rays, the ionized disk reflection or the warm Comptonization models may not be adequate to describe the vanishing soft excess feature observed in Mrk~590.

Resubmitted to ApJ following minor comments from the referee

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• BASS XXXIX: Swift-BAT AGN with changing-look optical spectra
• Multi-wavelength properties of changing-state active galactic nuclei: I. the evolution of soft excess and X-ray continuum
• Flares in the Changing Look AGN Mrk 590. II: Deep X-ray observations reveal a Comptonizing inner accretion flow