Eleven years of monitoring the Seyfert 1 Mrk 335 with Swift: Characterizing the X-ray and UV/optical variability

TL;DR

This 11-year Swift monitoring study of Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 335 analyzes its X-ray and UV/optical variability, revealing characteristic timescales, spectral behaviors, and correlations, with no evidence of accretion disc structural changes during low-flux states.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive long-term variability analysis of Mrk 335, including structure functions and correlations, highlighting the stability of the accretion disc structure despite X-ray low-flux periods.

Findings

X-ray and UV-optical structure functions are consistent with previous observations.

No evidence of accretion disc structural changes during low-flux states.

Correlations between X-ray and UV/optical bands vary over time, with some segments showing significant links.

Abstract

The narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy (NLS1) Mrk 335 has been continuously monitored with Swift since May 2007 when it fell into a long-lasting, X-ray low-flux interval. Results from the nearly 11 years of monitoring are presented here. Structure functions are used to measure the UV-optical and X-ray power spectra. The X-ray structure function measured between 10-100 days is consistent with the flat, low-frequency part of the power spectrum measured previously in Mrk 335. The UV-optical structure functions of Mrk 335 are comparable with those of other Seyfert 1 galaxies and of Mrk 335 itself when it was in a normal bright state. There is no indication that the current X-ray low-flux state is attributed to changes in the accretion disc structure of Mrk 335. The characteristic timescales measured in the structure functions can be attributed to thermal (for the UV) and dynamic (for the optical) timescales in a standard accretion disc. The high-quality UVW2 (~1800 A in the source frame) structure function appears to have two breaks and two different slopes between 10-160 days. Correlations between the X-ray and other bands are not highly significant when considering the entire 11-year light curves, but more significant behaviour is present when considering segments of the light curves. A correlation between the X-ray and UVW2 in 2014 (Year-8) may be predominately caused by an giant X-ray flare that was interpreted as jet-like emission. In 2008 (Year-2), possible lags between the UVW2 emission and other UV-optical waveband may be consistent with reprocessing of X-ray or UV emission in the accretion disc.