Correlated X-ray/UV/optical variability and the nature of accretion disc in the bare Seyfert 1 galaxy Fairall~9

TL;DR

This study investigates multi-wavelength variability in the Seyfert 1 galaxy Fairall 9, revealing that optical/UV variations lag behind X-ray emissions due to reprocessing, and suggesting the accretion disc is larger than standard models predict.

Contribution

First detailed reverberation mapping of Fairall 9 showing X-ray driven optical/UV variability and larger-than-expected accretion disc size.

Findings

Optical/UV lags follow τ∝λ^{1.36±0.13}, consistent with X-ray reprocessing.

Observed lags are longer than predictions from standard accretion disc models.

Variability amplitude decreases from X-ray to optical bands.

Abstract

We study multi-wavelength variability of a bare Seyfert 1 galaxy Fairall~9 using \swift{} monitoring observations consisting of $165$ usable pointings spanning nearly two years and covering six UV/optical bands and X-rays. Fairall~9 is highly variable in all bands though the variability amplitude decreases from X-ray to optical bands. The variations in the X-ray and UV/optical bands are strongly correlated. Our reverberation mapping analysis using the {\tt JAVALIN} tool shows that the variation in the UV/optical bands lag behind the variations in the X-ray band by $\sim 2-10{\rm~days}$. These lag measurements strongly suggest that the optical/UV variations are mainly caused by variations in the X-rays, and the origin of most of the optical/UV emission is X-ray reprocessing. The observed lags are found to vary as $\tau\propto\lambda^{1.36\pm0.13}$, consistent with the prediction, $\tau\propto\lambda^{4/3}$, for X-ray reprocessing in a standard accretion disc. However, the predicted lags for an standard accretion disc with X-ray reprocessing using black hole mass ($M_{BH} \sim 2.6\times10^{8}~M_{\odot}$) estimated from the reverberation mapping of broad emission lines and accretion rate relative to the Eddington rate ($\dot{m_E} =0.02$) are shorter than the observed lags. These observations suggest that accretion disc in Fairall~9 is larger than that predicted by the standard disc model, and confirm similar findings in a few other Seyfert 1 galaxies such as NGC~5548.