Issue |
A&A
Volume 519, September 2010
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A17 | |
Number of page(s) | 16 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201014320 | |
Published online | 07 September 2010 |
Variability and the X-ray/UV ratio of active galactic nuclei*
1
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Roma, Italy e-mail: fausto.vagnetti@roma2.infn.it
2
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy
Received:
25
February
2010
Accepted:
27
April
2010
Context. The observed relation between the X-ray radiation from active galactic nuclei, originating in the corona, and the
optical/UV radiation from the disk is usually described by the anticorrelation between the UV to X-ray slope
and the UV luminosity. Many factors can affect this relation, including: i) enhanced X-ray emission
associated with the jets of radio-loud AGNs, ii) X-ray absorption associated with the UV broad absorption line (BAL)
outflows, iii) other X-ray absorption not associated with BALs, iv) intrinsic X-ray weakness, v) UV and
X-ray variability, and non-simultaneity of UV and X-ray observations. The separation of these effects provides
information about the intrinsic
- LUV relation and its dispersion, constraining models of
disk-corona coupling.
Aims. We use simultaneous UV/X-ray observations to remove the influence of non-simultaneous measurements from
the - LUV relation.
Methods. We extract simultaneous data from the second XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue (XMMSSC) and the
XMM-Newton Optical Monitor Serendipitous UV Source Survey catalogue (XMMOMSUSS), and derive the single-epoch
indices. We use ensemble structure functions to analyse multi-epoch data.
Results. We confirm the anticorrelation of with LUV, and do not find any evidence of a dependence
of
on z. The dispersion in our simultaneous data (σ~0.12) is not significantly
smaller than in previous non-simultaneous studies, suggesting that “artificial
variability” introduced by
non-simultaneity is not the main cause of dispersion. “Intrinsic
variability”, i.e., the true
variability of the X-ray to optical ratio, is instead important, and accounts for ~30% of the total
variance, or more. “Inter-source dispersion”, due to intrinsic differences in the average
values from source to
source, is also important. The dispersion introduced by variability is mostly caused by the long timescale variations, which are expected to be driven by the optical variations.
Key words: surveys / galaxies: active / quasars: general - X-rays: galaxies
Table 1 is only available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org
© ESO, 2010
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