Mining the XRT archive to probe the X-ray absorber structure in the AGN population

Journal
Date Issued
2015
Author(s)
BALLO, Lucia
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DOI
Abstract
One of the key ingredients of the Unified Model of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is the presence of a torus-like optically thick medium composed by dust and gas around the putative supermassive black hole. However, the structure, size and composition of this circumnuclear medium are still matter of debate. To this end, the search for column density variations through X-ray monitoring on different timescales (months, weeks and few days) is fundamental to constrain size, kinematics and location of the X-ray absorber(s). Here we describe our project of mining the Swift-XRT archive to assemble a sample of AGN with extreme column density variability and determining the physical properties of the X-ray absorber(s). We also present the results obtained from a daily-weekly Swift-XRT follow-up monitoring recently performed on one of the most interesting new candidates for variability discovered so far, Mrk 915.
Coverage
Swift: 10 Years of Discovery (SWIFT 10)
Volume
233
Start page
122
Conferenece
Swift: 10 Years of Discovery (SWIFT 10)
Conferenece place
Roma
Conferenece date
2-5 December 2014
Uri
Url
Issn Identifier
1824-8039
Ads BibCode
2015arXiv150502593B
Rights
open.access
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