Suzaku observations of Markarian 335: evidence for a distributed reflector

TL;DR

This study analyzes Suzaku and XMM-Newton observations of Mrk 335, revealing a complex reflection-dominated spectrum with a soft excess and Fe line, and suggests a model involving a blurred inner reflector and a neutral outer reflector.

Contribution

The paper presents a detailed reflection model with two distinct reflectors to explain the X-ray spectrum and variability of Mrk 335, advancing understanding of AGN reflection components.

Findings

Soft excess explained by ionized blurred reflector

Fe line produced by neutral outer reflector

Spectral variability linked to power-law pivoting

Abstract

We report on a 151 ks net exposure Suzaku observation of the Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 335. The 0.5-40 keV spectrum contains a broad Fe line, a strong soft excess below about 2 keV and a Compton hump around 20-30 keV. We find that a model consisting of a power law and two reflectors provides the best fit to the time-averaged spectrum. In this model, an ionized, heavily blurred, inner reflector produces most of the soft excess, while an almost neutral outer reflector (outside ~40 r_g) produces most of the Fe line emission. The spectral variability of the observation is characterised by spectral hardening at very low count rates. In terms of our power-law + two-reflector model it seems like this hardening is mainly caused by pivoting of the power law. The rms spectrum of the entire observation has the curved shape commonly observed in AGN, although the shape is significantly flatter when an interval which does not contain any deep dip in the lightcurve is considered. We also examine a previous 133 ks XMM-Newton observation of Mrk 335. We find that the XMM-Newton spectrum can be fitted with a similar two-reflector model as the Suzaku data and we confirm that the rms spectrum of the observation is flat. The flat rms spectra, as well as the high-energy data from the Suzaku PIN detector, disfavour an absorption origin for the soft excess in Mrk 335.