The origin of the soft excess in the luminous quasar HE 1029-1401 - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A Année : 2024

The origin of the soft excess in the luminous quasar HE 1029-1401

B Vaia
  • Fonction : Auteur
F Ursini
G Matt
  • Fonction : Auteur
D.R Ballantyne
  • Fonction : Auteur
S Bianchi
  • Fonction : Auteur
A de Rosa
  • Fonction : Auteur
R Middei
  • Fonction : Auteur
E Piconcelli
  • Fonction : Auteur
A Tortosa
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

The enigmatic and intriguing phenomenon of the "soft excess" observed in the X-ray spectra of luminous quasars continues to be a subject of considerable interest and debate in the field of high-energy astrophysics. This study focuses on the quasar HE 1029-1401 ($z=0.086$, $\log(L_{\rm{bol}}/[\rm{erg\,s^{-1}}])= 46.0 \pm 0.2$), with a particular emphasis on investigating the properties of the hot corona and the physical origin of the soft excess. In this study, we present the results of a joint \textit{XMM-Newton}/\textit{NuSTAR} monitoring campaign of this quasar conducted in May 2022. The source exhibits a cold and narrow Fe $\rm{K}\alpha$ emission line at 6.4 keV, in addition to the detection of a broad component. Our findings suggest that the soft excess observed in HE 1029-1401 can be adequately explained by Comptonized emission originating from a warm corona. Specifically, fitting the spectra with two \nthcomp component we found that the warm corona is characterized by a photon index ($\Gamma^{w}$) of $2.75\pm0.05$ and by an electron temperature ($kT_{e}^{w}$) of $0.39^{+0.06}_{-0.04}$ keV, while the optical depth ($\tau^{w}$) is found to be $23\pm3$. We also test more physical models for the warm corona, corresponding to two scenarios: pure Comptonization and Comptonization plus reflection. Both models provide a good fit to the data, and are in agreement with a radially extended warm corona having a size of a few tens of gravitational radii.
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hal-04603645 , version 1 (13-09-2024)

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B Vaia, F Ursini, G Matt, D.R Ballantyne, S Bianchi, et al.. The origin of the soft excess in the luminous quasar HE 1029-1401. Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A, 2024, 688, pp.A189. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/202449524⟩. ⟨hal-04603645⟩
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