Issue |
A&A
Volume 628, August 2019
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A135 | |
Number of page(s) | 16 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201935874 | |
Published online | 20 August 2019 |
Testing the disk-corona interplay in radiatively-efficient broad-line AGN
1
Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), Giessenbachstrasse 1, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
e-mail: arcodia@mpe.mpg.de
2
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Via Bianchi 46, 23807 Merate, LC, Italy
Received:
12
May
2019
Accepted:
18
July
2019
The correlation observed between monochromatic X-ray and UV luminosities in radiatively-efficient active galactic nuclei (AGN) lacks a clear theoretical explanation despite being used for many applications. Such a correlation, with its small intrinsic scatter and its slope that is smaller than unity in log space, represents the compelling evidence that a mechanism regulating the energetic interaction between the accretion disk and the X-ray corona must be in place. This ensures that going from fainter to brighter sources the coronal emission increases less than the disk emission. We discuss here a self-consistently coupled disk-corona model that can identify this regulating mechanism in terms of modified viscosity prescriptions in the accretion disk. The model predicts a lower fraction of accretion power dissipated in the corona for higher accretion states. We then present a quantitative observational test of the model using a reference sample of broad-line AGN and modeling the disk-corona emission for each source in the LX − LUV plane. We used the slope, normalization, and scatter of the observed relation to constrain the parameters of the theoretical model. For non-spinning black holes and static coronae, we find that the accretion prescriptions that match the observed slope of the LX − LUV relation produce X-rays that are too weak with respect to the normalization of the observed relation. Instead, considering moderately-outflowing Comptonizing coronae and/or a more realistic high-spinning black hole population significantly relax the tension between the strength of the observed and modeled X-ray emission, while also predicting very low intrinsic scatter in the LX − LUV relation. In particular, this latter scenario traces a known selection effect of flux-limited samples that preferentially select high-spinning, hence brighter, sources.
Key words: galaxies: nuclei / quasars: general / quasars: supermassive black holes / X-rays: general / accretion / accretion disks / galaxies: active
© R. Arcodia et al. 2019
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Open Access funding provided by Max Planck Society.
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