The physical origin of the soft excess in AGN remains hotly debated. Blurredionised reflection, Comptonization, ionised absorption and other models canaccount for it, but 0.4-50keV observations are needed to break the degeneracybetween models. Our recent work shows that short, simultaneous snapshots withXMM and NuSTAR can distinguish between reflection and absorption using only thestrengths of the soft and hard excesses, without requiring more complex modelfits. We propose to observe 7 extreme AGN from the hard X-ray-selected Swift/BATcatalogue jointly with XMM and NuSTAR in a 140 ks campaign. Our observationswill constrain the soft excess production mechanisms in these sources using anovel, powerful technique,shedding light on this long-standing question in AGN science.
Instrument
EMOS1, EMOS2, EPN, OM, RGS1, RGS2
Temporal Coverage
2015-07-05T21:43:58Z/2015-07-15T02:13:30Z
Version
17.56_20190403_1200
Mission Description
The European Space Agencys (ESA) X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) was launched by an Ariane 504 on December 10th 1999. XMM-Newton is ESAs second cornerstone of the Horizon 2000 Science Programme. It carries 3 high throughput X-ray telescopes with an unprecedented effective area, and an optical monitor, the first flown on a X-ray observatory. The large collecting area and ability to make long uninterrupted exposures provide highly sensitive observations. Since Earths atmosphere blocks out all X-rays, only a telescope in space can detect and study celestial X-ray sources. The XMM-Newton mission is helping scientists to solve a number of cosmic mysteries, ranging from the enigmatic black holes to the origins of the Universe itself. Observing time on XMM-Newton is being made available to the scientific community, applying for observational periods on a competitive basis.
European Space Agency, Dr Ranjan Vasudevan, 2016, 'The Hard X-ray Perspective on the Soft X-ray excess', 17.56_20190403_1200, European Space Agency, https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-9vo4jcy
