The broad-band view of the bare Seyfert PG 1426+015: relativistic reflection, the soft excess, and the importance of oxygen

ABSTRACT We present results from a deep, coordinated XMM–Newton + NuSTAR observation of the type 1 Seyfert PG 1426+015, a source of particular interest as the most massive reverberation-mapped black hole to date ($\log [M_{\rm {BH}}/M_{\odot }]$ = $9.01^{+0.11}_{-0.16}$). The high-resolution RGS data confirm the ‘bare’ nature of the source, showing no evidence for absorption beyond the Galactic column, while the broad-band spectrum unambiguously reveals the presence of relativistic reflection from the innermost accretion disc (in the form of a relativistically broadened iron emission and associated Compton reflection hump) as well as confirming the presence of the strong soft excess reported previously. We explore whether relativistic reflection can successfully account for the soft excess along with the higher-energy reflection features, utilizing the two most-commonly used reflection codes (reflionx, xillver). Ultimately, we find that both models are able to successfully reproduce the soft excess, though in the case of the xillver model this is contingent on reducing the strength of the O viii line included in the model, as otherwise this feature prevents the model from reproducing the data. The reflection models that successfully reproduce the broad-band data imply a relatively high density for the accretion disc of $\log [n_{\rm {e}} / \rm {cm}^{-3}]$ $\sim 18$, consistent with the loose anti-correlation seen from other active galactic nuclie (AGNs) in the $\log [n_{\rm {e}} / \rm {cm}^{-3}]$ versus $\log [m_{\rm {BH}} \dot{m}^2]$ plane, as well as a moderate-to-high black hole spin of $a^{*} \gtrsim 0.7$. This preliminary spin constraint is strongly dependent on the assumption that the soft excess is dominated by relativistic reflection.