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Published November 2022 | public
Journal Article

X-ray absorption and reprocessing in the z ∼ 2.5 lensed quasar 2MASS J1042+1641

Abstract

We present new broad-band X-ray observations of the z ∼ 2.5 lensed quasar 2MASS J1042+1641, combining XMM–Newton, Chandra, and NuSTAR to provide coverage of the X-ray spectrum over the 0.3–40 keV bandpass in the observed frame, corresponding to the ∼1–140 keV band in the rest frame of 2MASS J1042+1641. The X-ray data show clear evidence for strong (but still Compton-thin) X-ray absorption, NH ∼ 3–4 × 10²³ cm⁻²⁠, in addition to significant reprocessing by Compton-thick material that must lie away from our line of sight to the central X-ray source. We test two different interpretations for the latter: first that the reprocessing occurs in a classic active galactic nucleus torus, as invoked in unification models, and second that the reprocessing occurs in the accretion disc. Both models can successfully reproduce the observed spectra, and both imply that the source is viewed at moderately low inclinations (i < 50°) despite the heavy line-of-sight absorption. Combining the X-ray data with infrared (IR) data from WISE, the results seen from 2MASS J1042+1641 further support the recent suggestion that large X-ray and IR surveys may together be able to identify good lensed quasar candidates in advance of detailed imaging studies.

Additional Information

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for their detailed feedback, which helped to improve the final version of the manuscript. The authors would also like to thank T. Schmidt and T. Treu for providing advance details of their lens modelling. DJW acknowledges support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in the form of an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (grant ST/N004027/1). The scientific results reported in this paper are based in part on observations made by the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, as well as data obtained with XMM–Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States. This research has also made use of data obtained with NuSTAR, a project led by Caltech, funded by NASA and managed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and has utilized the NUSTARDAS software package, jointly developed by the Space Science Data Centre (SSDC; Italy) and Caltech (USA). For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023