Survey of Bare Active Galactic Nuclei in the local universe (z < 0.2): I. On the origin of Soft-Excess

Abstract

We analyse a sample of 21 `bare' Seyfert~1 Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), a sub-class of Seyfert~1s, with intrinsic absorption ${\mathrm{N}}_{\mathrm{H}}\sim 10^{20}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$, in the local universe (z $<$ 0.2) using {\it XMM-Newton} and {\it Swift}/XRT observations. The luminosities of the primary continuum, the X-ray emission in the 3 to 10 keV energy range and the soft-excess, the excess emission that appears above the low-energy extrapolation of the power-law fit of 3 to 10 keV X-ray spectra, are calculated. Our spectral analysis reveals that the long-term intrinsic luminosities of the soft-excess and the primary continuum are tightly correlated $(L_{PC}\propto L_{SE}^{1.1\pm 0.04})$. We also found that the luminosities are correlated for each source. This result suggests that both the primary continuum and soft excess emissions exhibit a dependency on the accretion rate in a similar way.

Accepted for publication in ApJ Supplement Series, 37 pages, 12 figures 5 tables