The XMM-Newton Wide Angle Survey (XWAS): the X-ray spectrum of type-1 AGN

TL;DR

This study analyzes the broad band X-ray properties of a large sample of type-1 AGN from the XMM-Newton survey, revealing insights into their spectral characteristics, absorption features, and soft excess properties across different luminosities and redshifts.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the broad band X-ray spectra of over 400 type-1 AGN, highlighting spectral trends and challenging existing AGN unification models.

Findings

Mean spectral index <Gamma>=1.96±0.02 with dispersion 0.27

Hardening of spectra at faint fluxes and higher redshifts/luminosities

Detection of soft excess in ~36% of sources

Abstract

We discuss the broad band X-ray properties of one of the largest samples of X-ray selected type-1 AGN to date (487 objects in total), drawn from the XMM-Newton Wide Angle Survey. The objects cover 2-10 keV luminosities from ~10^{42}-10^{45} erg s^{-1} and are detected up to redshift ~4. We constrain the overall properties of the broad band continuum, soft excess and X-ray absorption, along with their dependence on the X-ray luminosity and redshift and we discuss the implications for models of AGN emission. We constrained the mean spectral index of the broad band X-ray continuum to <Gamma>=1.96+-0.02 with intrinsic dispersion sigma=0.27_{-0.02}^{+0.01}. The continuum becomes harder at faint fluxes and at higher redshifts and luminosities. The dependence of Gamma with flux is likely due to undetected absorption rather than to spectral variation. We found a strong dependence of the detection efficiency of objects on the spectral shape which can have a strong impact on the measured mean continuum shapes of sources at different redshifts and luminosities. We detected excess absorption in ~3% of our objects, with column densities ~a few x10^{22} cm^{-2}. The apparent mismatch between the optical classification and X-ray properties of these objects is a challenge for the standard AGN unification model. We found that the fraction of objects with detected soft excess is ~36%. Using a thermal model, we constrained the soft excess mean temperature and intrinsic dispersion to <kT>~100 eV and sigma~34 eV. The origin of the soft excess as thermal emission from the accretion disk or Compton scattered disk emission is ruled out on the basis of the temperatures detected and the lack of correlation of the measured temperature with the X-ray luminosity (abridged).