Obscuring Environment and X-Ray Variability of Compact Symmetric Objects Unveiled with XMM-Newton and NuSTAR

Abstract

Compact symmetric objects (CSOs) show radio features such as jets, lobes, and hot spots, which are contained within their host galaxies, and likely represent a recent radio activity. A subpopulation of CSOs with high intrinsic X-ray column densities has been inferred from shallow, soft X-ray band exposures, and observed to cluster in the linear radio size versus 5 GHz radio power plane, which suggests that a dense circumnuclear medium may dramatically influence the growth of compact radio structures. Here, we report on the first detection of two CSOs, 2021+614 and J1511+0518, at energies above 10 keV with NuSTAR. We model the NuSTAR data jointly with the new XMM-Newton data of J1511+0518, and with the archival XMM-Newton data of 2021+614. A toroidal reprocessor model fits the data well and allows us to robustly confirm the X-ray properties of the CSO absorbers and continuum. In both sources, we find intrinsic X-ray absorbing column densities in excess of 1023 cm−2, hard photon indices of the primary emission, Γ ∼ 1.4–1.7, Fe Kα line emission, and variability of the intrinsic X-ray flux density on the timescale of years. The studied X-ray continua are dominated by the primary power-law emission at energies above 3 keV, and by the scattered component at energies below 3 keV. An additional soft X-ray component, modeled with a hot, collisionally ionized plasma with temperature kT ∼ 1 keV, is required by the XMM-Newton data in J1511+0518, which is corroborated by the tentative evidence for the extension in the archival Chandra image of the source.