Variable Nature of Magnetically-Driven Ultra-Fast Outflows

Abstract

Among a number of active galactic nuclei that drive ionized outflows in X-rays, a low-redshift (z = 0.184) quasar, PDS 456, is long known to exhibit one of the exemplary ultra-fast outflows (UFOs). However, the physical process of acceleration mechanisms is yet to be definitively constrained. In this work, we model the variations of the Fe K UFO properties in PDS 456 over many epochs in X-ray observations in the context of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) accretion disk winds employed in our earlier studies of similar X-ray absorbers. We applied the model to the 2013/2014 XMM-Newton/NuSTAR spectra to determine the UFO's condition; namely, velocity, ionization parameter, column density, and equivalent width (EW). Under some provisions on the dependence of X-ray luminosity on the accretion rate applicable to near-Eddington state, our photoionization calculations, coupled to a 2.5-dimensional MHD-driven wind model, can further reproduce the observed correlations of the UFO velocity and the anticorrelation of its EW with the X-ray strength of PDS 456. This work demonstrates that UFOs, even without radiative pressure, can be driven as an extreme case purely by magnetic interaction while also producing the observed spectrum and correlations.

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