X-Ray Spectral Study of AGN Sources Content in Some Deep Extragalactic XMM-Newton Fields

TL;DR

This study analyzes the X-ray spectra of AGN sources in deep XMM-Newton fields, identifying soft excess features and comparing their properties across different systems.

Contribution

It provides a systematic spectral analysis of AGN in deep fields, identifying soft excess components and comparing their characteristics across source types.

Findings

Detection of soft excess in a subset of sources at 99% confidence

Establishment of upper limits for soft excess flux at 0.1 and 0.2 keV

Comparison of soft excess properties across different AGN types

Abstract

We undertake a spectral study of a sample of bright X-ray sources taken from six XMM-Newton fields at high galactic latitudes, where AGN are the most populous class. These six fields were chosen such that the observation had an exposure time more than 60 ksec, had data from the EPIC-pn detector in the full-Frame mode and lying at high galactic latitude $|b| > 25^o$ . The analysis started by fitting the spectra of all sources with an absorbed power-law model, and then we fitted all the spectra with an absorbed power-law with a low energy black-body component model.The sources for which we added a black body gave an F-test probability of 0.01 or less (i.e. at 99% confidence level), were recognized as sources that display soft excess. We perform a comparative analysis of soft excess spectral parameters with respect to the underlying power-law one for sources that satisfy this criterion. Those sources, that do not show evidence for a soft excess, based on the F-test probability at a 99% confidence level, were also fitted with the absorbed power-law with a low energy black-body component model with the black-body temperature fixed at 0.1 and 0.2 keV. We establish upper limits on the soft excess flux for those sources at these two temperatures. Finally we have made use of Aladdin interactive sky atlas and matching with NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) to identify the X-ray sources in our sample. For those sources which are identified in the NED catalogue, we make a comparative study of the soft excess phenomenon for different types of systems.