Absorption from a multi-layer circumnuclear medium and reflection from the accretion disc in NGC 1365

Abstract

NGC 1365 hosts an X-ray obscured AGN known for both its variable absorption and its relativistic features in the reflection component. Recent simultaneous observations performed by XMM-Newton and NuSTAR caught the source in a rare, nearly unobscured state, revealing the presence of a warm absorber and a neutral, but low column density (∼ 10^(22) cm^-2) absorber, usually not observable due to thicker layers along the line of sight. Here I propose a multi-layer structure of the circumnuclear medium which can explain all the observed absorption states of this source, and their variability properties. Remarkably, despite the spectral complexity due to this multi-component absorber, the relativistic reflection component (and hence the black hole spin) can be unambiguously measured through a time resolved spectroscopic analysis.

Additional details