Clustering, Cosmology and a New Era of Black Hole Demographics -- II. The Conditional Luminosity Functions of Type 2 and Type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei

The orientation-based unification model of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) posits that the principle difference between obscured (Type 2) and unobscured (Type 1) AGNs is the line-of-sight into the central engine. If this model is correct than there should be no difference in many of the properties of AGN host galaxies (e.g., the mass of the surrounding dark matter haloes). However, recent clustering analyses of Type 1 and Type 2 AGNs have provided some evidence for a difference in the halo mass, in conflict with the orientation-based unified model. In this work, a method to compute the Conditional Luminosity Function (CLF) of Type 2 and Type 1 AGNs is presented. The CLF allows many fundamental halo properties to be computed as a function of AGN luminosity, which we apply to the question of the host halo masses of Type 1 and 2 AGNs. By making use of the total AGN CLF, the Type 1 X-ray luminosity function, and the luminosity-dependent Type 2 AGN fraction, the CLFs of Type 1 and 2 AGNs are calculated at $z\approx 0$ and $0.9$. At both $z$, there is no statistically significant difference in the mean halo mass of Type 2 and 1 AGNs at any luminosity. There is marginal evidence that Type 1 AGNs may have larger halo masses than Type 2s, which would be consistent with an evolutionary picture where quasars are initially obscured and then subsequently reveal themselves as Type 1s. As the Type 1 lifetime is longer, the host halo will increase somewhat in mass during the Type 1 phase. The CLF technique will be a powerful way to study the properties of many AGNs subsets (e.g., radio-loud, Compton-thick) as future wide-area X-ray and optical surveys substantially increase our ability to place AGNs in their cosmological context.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, accepted by MNRA

Revealing the accretion disc corona in Mrk 335 with multi-epoch X-ray spectroscopy

Active galactic nuclei host an accretion disc with an X-ray producing corona around a supermassive black hole. In bright sources, such as the Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 335, reflection of the coronal emission off the accretion disc has been observed. Reflection produces spectral features such as an iron emission line, which allow for properties of the inner accretion disc and the corona to be constrained. We perform a multi-epoch spectral analysis of all XMM-Newton, Suzaku, and NuSTAR observations of Mrk 335, and we optimize our fitting procedure to unveil correlations between the Eddington ratio and the spectral parameters. We find that the disc's ionization parameter correlates strongly with the Eddington ratio: the inner disc is more strongly ionized at higher flux. The slope of the correlation is less steep than previously predicted. Furthermore, the cut-off of the power-law spectrum increases in energy with the Eddington ratio, whereas the reflection fraction exhibits a decrease. We interpret this behaviour as geometrical changes of the corona as a function of the accretion rate. Below ~10% of the Eddington limit, the compact and optically thick corona is located close to the inner disc, whereas at higher accretion rates the corona is likely optically thin and extends vertically further away from the disc surface. Furthermore, we find a soft excess that consists of two components. In addition to a contribution from reflection in low ionization states, a second component is present that traces the overall flux.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

The Evolution of the Accretion Disk around 4U 1820-30 During a Superburst

Accretion from a disk onto a collapsed, relativistic star -- a neutron star or black hole -- is the mechanism widely believed to be responsible for the emission from compact X-ray binaries. Because of the extreme spatial resolution required, it is not yet possible to directly observe the evolution or dynamics of the inner parts of the accretion disk where general relativistic effects are dominant. Here, we use the bright X-ray emission from a superburst on the surface of the neutron star 4U 1820-30 as a spotlight to illuminate the disk surface. The X-rays cause iron atoms in the disk to fluoresce, allowing a determination of the ionization state, covering factor and inner radius of the disk over the course of the burst. The time-resolved spectral fitting shows that the inner region of the disk is disrupted by the burst, possibly being heated into a thicker, more tenuous flow, before recovering its previous form in ~1000 s. This marks the first instance that the evolution of the inner regions of an accretion disk has been observed in real-time.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter