The X-ray Energy Dependence of the Relation between Optical and X-ray Emission in Quasars

TL;DR

This study investigates how the relation between optical and X-ray emissions in quasars varies with X-ray energy, revealing dependencies on energy choice and accretion rates, and providing insights into quasar emission mechanisms.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel method to analyze alpha_ox at arbitrary X-ray energies and demonstrates how the energy dependence affects the optical-X-ray relation in quasars.

Findings

The alpha_ox-l_opt relation slope depends on X-ray energy, steepening at lower energies.

Eddington ratio correlates strongly with alpha_ox when optical luminosity is controlled.

Optical/X-ray correlations support a unified framework for quasar emission mechanisms.

Abstract

We develop a new approach to the well-studied anti-correlation between the optical-to-X-ray spectral index, alpha_ox, and the monochromatic optical luminosity, l_opt. By cross-correlating the SDSS DR5 quasar catalog with the XMM-Newton archive, we create a sample of 327 quasars with X-ray S/N > 6, where both optical and X-ray spectra are available. This allows alpha_ox to be defined at arbitrary frequencies, rather than the standard 2500 Angstroms and 2 keV. We find that while the choice of optical wavelength does not strongly influence the alpha_ox-l_opt relation, the slope of the relation does depend on the choice of X-ray energy. The slope of the relation becomes steeper when alpha_ox is defined at low (~ 1 keV) X-ray energies. This change is significant when compared to the slope predicted by a decrease in the baseline over which alpha_ox is defined. The slopes are also marginally flatter than predicted at high (~ 10 keV) X-ray energies. Partial correlation tests show that while the primary driver of alpha_ox is l_opt, the Eddington ratio correlates strongly with alpha_ox when l_opt is taken into account, so accretion rate may help explain these results. We combine the alpha_ox-l_opt and Gamma -L_bol/L_Edd relations to naturally explain two results: 1) the existence of the Gamma-l_x relation as reported in Young et al. (2009) and 2) the lack of a Gamma-l_opt relation. The consistency of the optical/X-ray correlations establishes a more complete framework for understanding the relation between quasar emission mechanisms. We also discuss two correlations with the hard X-ray bolometric correction, which we show correlates with both alpha_ox and Eddington ratio. This confirms that an increase in accretion rate correlates with a decrease in the fraction of up-scattered disk photons.