Caught in the act: measuring the changes in the corona that cause the extreme variability of 1H 0707−495

Abstract

The X-ray spectra of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy, 1H 0707–495, obtained with XMM–Newton, from time periods of varying X-ray luminosity are analysed in the context of understanding the changes to the X-ray emitting corona that lead to the extreme variability seen in the X-ray emission from active galactic nuclei (AGN). The emissivity profile of the accretion disc, illuminated by the X-ray emitting corona, along with previous measurements of reverberation time lags, is used to infer the spatial extent of the X-ray source. By fitting a twice-broken power-law emissivity profile to the relativistically broadened iron Kα fluorescence line, it is inferred that the X-ray emitting corona expands radially, over the plane of the accretion disc, by 25 to 30 per cent as the luminosity increases, contracting again as the luminosity decreases, while increases in the measured reverberation lag as the luminosity increases would require also variation in the vertical extent of the source above the disc. The spectrum of the X-ray continuum is found to soften as the total X-ray luminosity increases and we explore the variation in reflected flux as a function of directly observed continuum flux. These three observations combined with simple, first-principles models constructed from ray-tracing simulations of extended coronæ self-consistently portray an expanding corona whose average energy density decreases, but with a greater number of scattering particles as the luminosity of this extreme object increases.