NuSTAR observations of Mrk 766: distinguishing reflection from absorption
Harrison, F. A.; Stern, D.; Zhang, W. W.; Farrah, D.; Fabian, A. C.; Pinto, C.; Buisson, D. J. K.; Kara, E.; Ballantyne, D. R.; Boggs, S. E.; Christensen, F. E.; Craig, W. W.; Hailey, C. J.; Ricci, C.; Parker, M. L.; Walton, D. J.; Lohfink, A. M.; Vasudevan, R. V.
United Kingdom, Spain, United States, Denmark, Chile, China
Abstract
We present two new NuSTAR observations of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy Mrk 766 and give constraints on the two scenarios previously proposed to explain its spectrum and that of other NLS1s: relativistic reflection and partial covering. The NuSTAR spectra show a strong hard (>15 keV) X-ray excess, while simultaneous soft X-ray coverage of one of the observations provided by XMM-Newton constrains the ionized absorption in the source. The pure reflection model requires a black hole of high spin (a > 0.92) viewed at a moderate inclination (i=46_{-4}^{+1}°). The pure partial covering model requires extreme parameters: the cut-off of the primary continuum is very low (22_{-5}^{+7} keV) in one observation and the intrinsic X-ray emission must provide a large fraction (75 per cent) of the bolometric luminosity. Allowing a hybrid model with both partial covering and reflection provides more reasonable absorption parameters and relaxes the constraints on reflection parameters. The fractional variability reduces around the iron K band and at high energies including the Compton hump, suggesting that the reflected emission is less variable than the continuum.