An Extreme, Blueshifted Iron‐Line Profile in the Narrow‐Line Seyfert 1 PG 1402+261: An Edge‐on Accretion Disk or Highly Ionized Absorption?

Abstract

We report on a short XMM-Newton observation of the radio-quiet narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy PG 1402+261. The EPIC X-ray spectrum of PG 1402+261 shows a strong excess of counts between 6 and 9 keV in the rest frame. This feature can be modeled by an unusually strong (equivalent width 2 keV) and very broad (FWHM velocity of 110,000 km s-1) iron K-shell emission line. The line centroid energy at 7.3 keV appears blueshifted with respect to the iron Kα emission band between 6.4 and 6.97 keV, while the blue wing of the line extends to 9 keV in the quasar rest frame. The line profile can be fitted by reflection from the inner accretion disk, but an inclination angle of >60° is required to model the extreme blue wing of the line. Furthermore, the extreme strength of the line requires a geometry whereby the hard X-ray emission from PG 1402+261 above 2 keV is dominated by the pure-reflection component from the disk, while little or none of the direct hard power law is observed. Alternatively, the spectrum above 2 keV may be explained by an ionized absorber, if the column density is sufficiently high (NH > 3 × 1023 cm-2) and if the matter is ionized enough to produce a deep (τ ~ 1) iron K-shell absorption edge at 9 keV. This absorber could originate in a large column density, high-velocity outflow, perhaps similar to those that appear to be observed in several other high accretion rate active galactic nuclei. Further observations, especially at higher spectral resolution, are required to distinguish between the accretion disk reflection and outflow scenarios.