A NuSTAR census of coronal parameters in Seyfert galaxies

¹ Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Universitá degli Studi Roma Tre, via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy
e-mail: tortosa@fis.uniroma3.it
² Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 38000 Grenoble, France

Received: 29 November 2017
Accepted: 12 January 2018

Abstract

Context. We discuss the results of the hot corona parameters of active galactic nuclei (AGN) that have been recently measured with NuSTAR. The values taken from the literature of a sample of 19 bright Seyfert galaxies are analysed.

Aims. The aim of this work is to look for correlations between coronal parameters, such as the photon index and cut-off energy (when a phenomenological model is adopted) or the optical depth and temperature (when a Comptonization model is used), and other parameters of the systems, such as the black hole mass or the Eddington ratio.

Methods. We analysed the coronal parameters of the 19 unobscured, bright Seyfert galaxies that are present in the Swift/BAT 70-month catalogue and that have been observed by NuSTAR, alone or simultaneously with others X-ray observatories, such as Swift, Suzaku, or XMM-Newton.

Results. We found an anti-correlation with a significance level >98% between the coronal optical depth and the coronal temperature of our sample. On the other hand, no correlation between the above parameters and the black hole mass, the accretion rate, and the intrinsic spectral slope of the sources is found.