The outflow in Mrk 509: A method to calibrate XMM-Newton EPIC-pn and RGS

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to improve the cross-calibration between XMM-Newton instruments, enabling detection of small variations in ionized outflows in Mrk 509, and constrains the outflow location within 0.5 parsecs of the galaxy's core.

Contribution

The authors develop a calibration method that enhances the relative effective area accuracy between RGS and EPIC-pn instruments, applicable to various sources.

Findings

Achieved 4% relative calibration accuracy between instruments.

Detected three outflow components in Mrk 509.

Constrained the highest ionized outflow component within 0.5 pc of the nucleus.

Abstract

We have analyzed three XMM-Newton observations of the Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 509, with the goal to detect small variations in the ionized outflow properties. Such measurements are limited by the quality of the cross-calibration between RGS, the best instrument to characterize the spectrum, and EPIC-pn, the best instrument to characterize the variability. For all three observations we are able to improve the relative calibration of RGS and pn consistently to 4 %. In all observations we detect three different outflow components and, thanks to our accurate cross-calibration we are able to detect small differences in the ionization parameter and column density in the highest ionized component of the outflow. This constrains the location of this component of the outflow to within 0.5 pc of the central source. Our method for modeling the relative effective area is not restricted to just this source and can in principle be extended to other types of sources as well.