On the reality of broad iron L lines from the narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxies 1H0707-495 and IRAS 13224-3809

TL;DR

This study used time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy of two narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxies to confirm that broad iron L lines are genuine features, not artifacts of spectral variability, supporting their physical reality.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates through simulations that broad Fe L lines in these galaxies are real features, not caused by spectral variability, confirming their physical origin.

Findings

Broad Fe L lines are confirmed as genuine features.

Spectral variability does not produce artificial broad lines.

The lines are not artifacts, supporting their physical interpretation.

Abstract

We performed time resolved spectroscopy of 1H0707-495 and IRAS 13224-3809 using long XMM-Newton observations. These are strongly variable narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxies and show broad features around 1 keV that has been interpreted as relativistically broad Fe L$\alpha$ lines. Such features are not clearly observed in other AGN despite sometimes having high iron abundance required by the best fitted blurred reflection models. Given the importance of these lines, we explore the possibility if rapid variability of spectral parameters may introduce broad bumps/dips artificially in the time averaged spectrum, which may then be mistaken as broadened lines. We tested this hypothesis by performing time resolved spectroscopy using long (> 100 ks) XMM-Newton observations and by dividing it into segments with typical exposure of few ks. We extracted spectra from each such segment and modelled using a two component phenomenological model consisting of a power law to represent hard component and a black body to represent the soft emission. As expected both the sources showed variations in the spectral parameters. Using these variation trends, we simulated model spectra for each segment and then co-added to get a combined simulated spectrum. In the simulated spectra, we found no broad features below 1 keV and in particular no deviation near 0.9 keV as seen in the real average spectra. This implies that the broad Fe L? line that is seen in the spectra of these sources is not an artifact of the variation of spectral components and hence providing evidence that the line is indeed genuine.