On the presence of ultra-fast outflows in the WAX sample of Seyfert galaxies

TL;DR

This paper re-analyzes XMM-Newton data of Seyfert galaxies and confirms the presence of ultra-fast outflows through Fe K absorption lines, emphasizing the importance of including all spectral events for accurate detection.

Contribution

It demonstrates that previous non-detections were due to spectral data handling, confirming UFOs in Seyfert galaxies with comprehensive spectral analysis.

Findings

Fe K absorption lines detected at >99% confidence

Including double events increases detection robustness

Confirms presence of ultra-fast outflows in Seyfert galaxies

Abstract

The study of winds in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is of utmost importance as they may provide the long sought-after link between the central black hole and the host galaxy, establishing the AGN feedback. Recently, Laha et al. (2014) reported the X-ray analysis of a sample of 26 Seyferts observed with XMM-Newton, which are part of the so-called warm absorbers in X-rays (WAX) sample. They claim the non-detection of Fe K absorbers indicative of ultra-fast outflows (UFOs) in four observations previously analyzed by Tombesi et al. (2010). They mainly impute the Tombesi et al. detections to an improper modeling of the underlying continuum in the E=4-10 keV band. We therefore re-address here the robustness of these detections and we find that the main reason for the claimed non-detections is likely due to their use of single events only spectra, which reduces the total counts by 40%. Performing a re-analysis of the data in the whole E=0.3-10 keV energy band using their models and spectra including also double events, we find that the blue-shifted Fe K absorption lines are indeed detected at >99%. This work demonstrates the robustness of these detections in XMM-Newton even including complex model components such as reflection, relativistic lines and warm absorbers.