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Published March 10, 2016 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

NuSTAR and XMM-Newton Observations of the Hard X-Ray Spectrum of Centaurus A

Abstract

We present simultaneous XMM-Newton and Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) observations spanning 3–78 keV of the nearest radio galaxy, Centaurus A (Cen A). The accretion geometry around the central engine in Cen A is still debated, and we investigate possible configurations using detailed X-ray spectral modeling. NuSTAR imaged the central region of Cen A with subarcminute resolution at X-ray energies above 10 keV for the first time, but found no evidence for an extended source or other off-nuclear point sources. The XMM-Newton and NuSTAR spectra agree well and can be described with an absorbed power law with a photon index Γ = 1.815 ± 0.005 and a fluorescent Fe Kɑ line in good agreement with literature values. The spectrum does not require a high-energy exponential rollover, with a constraint of E_(fold) > 1 MeV. A thermal Comptonization continuum describes the data well, with parameters that agree with values measured by INTEGRAL, in particular an electron temperature kTe between ≈100–300 keV and seed photon input temperatures between 5 and 50 eV. We do not find evidence for reflection or a broad iron line and put stringent upper limits of R < 0.01 on the reflection fraction and accretion disk illumination. We use archival Chandra data to estimate the contribution from diffuse emission, extra-nuclear point sources, and the outer X-ray jet to the observed NuSTAR and XMM-Newton X-ray spectra and find the contribution to be negligible. We discuss different scenarios for the physical origin of the observed hard X-ray spectrum and conclude that the inner disk is replaced by an advection-dominated accretion flow or that the X-rays are dominated by synchrotron self-Compton emission from the inner regions of the radio jet or a combination thereof.

Additional Information

© 2016 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2015 November 4; accepted 2016 January 23; published 2016 March 8. We thank the anonymous referee for comments that helped to improve this work. This work was supported under NASA Contract No. NNG08FD60C and made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We thank the NuSTAR Operations, Software, and Calibration teams for support with the execution and analysis of these observations. This research has made use of the NuSTAR Data Analysis Software (NuSTARDAS), jointly developed by the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC, Italy) and the California Institute of Technology (USA). Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. This research has made use of a collection of ISIS scripts provided by the Dr. Karl Remeis Observatory, Bamberg, Germany at http://www.sternwarte.uni-erlangen. de/isis/. C.M. acknowledges the support of the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi) through Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) grant 50OR1404. We acknowledge support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through grant Wi 1860 10-1. This research was funded in part by NASA through Fermi Guest Investigator grants NNH09ZDA001N, NNH10ZDA001N, NNH12ZDA001N, NNH13ZDA001NFERMI. This research was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Goddard Space Flight Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities through a contract with NASA. M.B. acknowledges support from NASA Headquarters under the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program, grant NNX14AQ07H. We would like to thank John E. Davis for the slxfig module, which was used to produce all figures in this work. Facilities: NuSTAR, XMM, CXO.

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Published - apj_819_2_150.pdf

Submitted - 1511.01915v1.pdf

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