Kavli Affiliate: Claudio Ricci
| First 5 Authors: Carolina Andonie, Claudio Ricci, Stéphane Paltani, Patricia Arévalo, Ezequiel Treister
| Summary:
Reprocessed X-ray emission in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) can provide
fundamental information about the circumnuclear environments of supermassive
black holes. Recent mid-infrared studies have shown evidence of an extended
dusty structure perpendicular to the torus plane. In this work, we build a
self-consistent X-ray model for the Circinus Galaxy including the different
physical components observed at different wavelengths and needed to reproduce
both the morphological and spectral properties of this object in the
mid-infrared. The model consists of four components: the accretion disk, the
broad line region (BLR), a flared disk in the equatorial plane and a hollow
cone in the polar direction. Our final model reproduces well the 3–70 keV
Chandra and NuSTAR spectra of Circinus, including the complex Fe K$alpha$ zone
and the spectral curvature, although several additional Gaussian lines,
associated to either ionized iron or to broadened Fe K$alpha$/K$beta$ lines,
are needed. We find that the flared disk is Compton thick ($ N_{rm H,d}= rm
1.01^{+0.03}_{-0.24}times 10^{25}: cm^{-2}$) and geometrically thick
($CF=0.55^{+0.01}_{-0.05}$), and that the hollow cone has a Compton-thin column
density ($ N_{rm H,c}= rm 2.18^{+0.47}_{-0.43}times 10^{23}: cm^{-2}$),
which is consistent with the values inferred by mid-infrared studies. Including
also the BLR, the effective line of sight column density is $ N_{rm H}= rm
1.47^{+0.03}_{-0.24}times 10^{25}: cm^{-2}$. This approach to X-ray
modelling, i.e. including all the different reprocessing structures, will be
very important to fully exploit data from future X-ray missions.
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