Strong Fe-L[alpha] fluorescent emission in type-1 Seyfert galaxies

Abstract

A search for relativistically blurred Fe-L [alpha] is performed on 353 nearby broad and narrow line Type-1 active galactic nuclei (AGN). Simple phenomenological modeling is applied to establish the presence of Fe-L[alpha] . Potential Fe-L[alpha] emission is detected in 65 of these objects. The detection of such a high signal-to- noise ratio (S/N) feature provides confirmation of the reflection model and also presents the possibility to attempt reverberation mapping in AGN. To determine the strength of the Fe-L[alpha] feature and the S/N of the observation required so that Fe-L [alpha] emission can be differentiated in the spectrum from an absorption edge, simulations were performed for various values of the equivalent width (EW) and the number of counts from 0:5 - 2:0 keV. Seven objects in the sample have sufficient S/N to potentially distinguish Fe-L[alpha] from absorption. Detailed spectral fitting of these seven objects shows that the driving factor in finding Fe-L[alpha] emitters is simply S/N.