A DIRECT LINKAGE BETWEEN AGN OUTFLOWS IN THE NARROW-LINE REGIONS AND THE X-RAY EMISSION FROM THE ACCRETION DISKS

Abstract

ABSTRACT The origin of outflow in the narrow-line region (NLR) of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) is studied in this paper by focusing on the relationship between the [O iii]λ5007 line profile and the hard-X-ray (in a bandpass of 2–10 keV) emission from the central super-massive black hole (SMBH) in type-I AGNs. A sample of 47 local X-ray selected type-I AGNs at z < 0.2 ?> is extracted from the 2XMMi/SDSS-DR7 catalog, which was originally cross-matched by Pineau et al. The X-ray luminosities in an energy band from 2 to 10 keV of these luminous AGNs range from 1042 to 10 44 erg s − 1 ?> . A joint spectral analysis is performed on their optical and X-ray spectra, in which the [O iii] line profile is modeled by a sum of several Gaussian functions to quantify its deviation from a pure Gaussian function. The statistics allow us to identify a moderate correlation with a significance level of 2.78σ: luminous AGNs with stronger [O iii] blue asymmetry tend to have steeper hard-X-ray spectra. By identifying the role of L / L Edd ?> on the correlation at a 2–3σ significance level in both direct and indirect ways, we argue that the photon index versus the asymmetry correlation provides evidence that the AGN’s outflow commonly observed in its NLR is related to the accretion process occurring around the central SMBH, which favors the wind/radiation model as the origin of the outflow in luminous AGNs.