2018/02/27 by Priyanka Rani, C. S. Stalin
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Compton scattering #Corona (planetary geology) #Electron #Emission spectrum #Equivalent width #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Nuclear physics #Physics #Plasma #Spectral line #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aab356
10 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2018/02/27 · openalex created_date 2018/03/06 · openalex publication_date 2018/03/30 · arxiv updated 2018/04/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract We present a measurement of the cut-off energy, a proxy for the temperature of the corona in the nuclear continuum of the Seyfert 1 galaxy 3C 120 using ∼120 ks of observation from NuSTAR . The quality broadband spectrum from 3–79 keV enabled us to measure the Compton reflection component ( R ) and to constrain the temperature of the coronal plasma. Fitting one of the advanced Comptonization models, compPS , to the observed broadband spectrum, we derived the kinetic temperature of the electrons in the corona to be kT e = 25 ± 2 keV with a Compton y parameter of y = 2.2 ± 0.1 for a slab geometry and <?CDATA kTe=26-0+2?> keV with a y of <?CDATA 2.99-0.18+2.99?> assuming a spherical geometry. We noticed excess emission from ∼10–35 keV arising due to Compton reflection and a broad Fe K α line at 6.43 keV with an equivalent width of 60 ± 5 eV. The variations in count rates in the soft (3–10 keV) band are found to be larger compared to the hard (10–79 keV) band, with mean fractional variability amplitudes of 0.065 ± 0.002 and 0.052 ± 0.003 for the soft and hard bands respectively. 3C 120 is known to have a strong jet; however, our results indicate that it is either dormant or its contribution, if any, to the X-ray emission is negligible during the epoch of NuSTAR observation.