A global look at X-ray time lags in Seyfert galaxies

Abstract

X-ray reverberation, where light-travel time delays map out the compact geometry around the inner accretion flow in supermassive black holes, has been discovered in several of the brightest, most variable and well-known bare Seyfert galaxies. In this work, we expand the study of X-ray time lags to all Seyfert galaxies in the XMM-Newton archive above a nominal rms and exposure level. We find that reverberation is found in > 50% of sources (with > 99% confidence). We also find that the low-frequency hard lag (which is likely associated with the coronal emission) is found in > 80% of sources, suggesting that most sources with X-ray variability show intrinsic variability from the nuclear region. We update the known iron K lag amplitude vs. black hole mass relation.