2012/10/31 by E. M. Cackett, A. C. Fabian, A. Zogbhi +6 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Active galactic nucleus #Amplitude #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black hole (networking) #Corona (planetary geology) #Flux (metallurgy) #Galaxy #Lag #Optics #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Reflection (computer programming) #Reverberation #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/764/1/l9
5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2013/01/03 · openalex publication_date 2013/01/28 · arxiv updated 2015/06/11 · openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Reverberation lags have recently been discovered in a handful of nearby, variable active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Here, we analyze a ∼100 ks archival XMM-Newton observation of the highly variable AGN, ESO 113−G010, in order to search for lags between hard, 1.5–4.5 keV, and soft, 0.3–0.9 keV, energy X-ray bands. At the lowest frequencies available in the light curve (≲ 1.5 × 10 −4 Hz), we find hard lags where the power-law-dominated hard band lags the soft band (where the reflection fraction is high). However, at higher frequencies in the range (2–3) × 10 −4 Hz we find a soft lag of −325 ± 89 s. The general evolution from hard to soft lags as the frequency increases is similar to other AGNs where soft lags have been detected. We interpret this soft lag as due to reverberation from the accretion disk, with the reflection component responding to variability from the X-ray corona. For a black hole mass of 7 × 10 6 M ☉ this corresponds to a light-crossing time of ∼9 R g / c ; however, dilution effects mean that the intrinsic lag is likely longer than this. Based on recent black hole mass scaling for lag properties, the lag amplitude and frequency are more consistent with a black hole a few times more massive than the best estimates, though flux-dependent effects could easily add scatter this large.