Direct Measurement of the X-ray Time-Delay Transfer Function in Active Galactic Nuclei. (arXiv:1210.0469v1 [astro-ph.HE])

Direct Measurement of the X-ray Time-Delay Transfer Function in Active Galactic Nuclei. (arXiv:1210.0469v1 [astro-ph.HE]):
The origin of the observed time lags, in nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN),
between hard and soft X-ray photons is investigated using new XMM-Newton data
for the narrow-line Seyfert I galaxy Ark 564 and existing data for 1H0707-495
and NGC 4051. These AGN have highly variable X-ray light curves that contain
frequent, high peaks of emission. The averaged light curve of the peaks is
directly measured from the time series, and it is shown that (i) peaks occur at
the same time, within the measurement uncertainties, at all X-ray energies, and
(ii) there exists a substantial tail of excess emission at hard X-ray energies,
which is delayed with respect to the time of the main peak, and is particularly
prominent in Ark 564. Observation (i) rules out that the observed lags are
caused by Comptonization time delays and disfavors a simple model of
propagating fluctuations on the accretion disk. Observation (ii) is consistent
with time lags caused by Compton-scattering reverberation from material a few
thousand light-seconds from the primary X-ray source. The power spectral
density and the frequency-dependent phase lags of the peak light curves are
consistent with those of the full time series. There is evidence for
non-stationarity in the Ark 564 time series in both the Fourier and peaks
analyses. A sharp `negative' lag (variations at hard photon energies lead soft
photon energies) observed in Ark 564 appears to be generated by the shape of
the hard-band transfer function and does not arise from soft-band reflection of
X-rays. These results reinforce the evidence for the existence of X-ray
reverberation in type I AGN, which requires that these AGN are significantly
affected by scattering from circumnuclear material a few tens or hundreds of
gravitational radii in extent.