The complex X-ray spectra of two high redshift quasars observed with ASCA

Details The complex X-ray spectra of two high redshift quasars observed with ASCA The complex X-ray spectra of two high redshift quasars observed with ASCA

Jun 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994pasj...46l..43s&link_type=abstract

PASJ: Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, vol. 46, no. 3, p. L43-L47

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

27

Quasars, Red Shift, X Ray Astronomy, X Ray Spectra, Astronomical Satellites, Galaxies, X Ray Absorption, X Rays

Scientific paper

We report preliminary results of Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA) observations of two high-redshift quasars (zeta approximately 3) PKS 0438-436 and PKS 2126-158. We find spectral flattening towards low energies in both sources, first found with Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) and interpreted as being due to excess X-ray absorption. However, the ROSAT data lacked the bandpass and sensitivity to unambiguously support this interpretation. We find that for PKS 2126-158, absorption in intervening low-redshift material along the line-of-sight provides a statistically better description of the data than absorption in material intrinsic to the quasar. The redshift of the putative absorber is required to be less than a few tenths. Given the redshift constraints and the fact that absorption is not common in lower redshift quasars, this result is not easily explained by a simple model. Either the absorber may be complex or else the intrinsic X-ray spectrum may be complex, or both. Compton-reflection dominated models are ruled out but a broken power-law model provides good fits to the data without requiring excess absorption. The break energy is at approximately 6-8 keV in the quasar frame and the energy index of the soft component is required to be extremely flat. This may mean that the X-ray emission in these objects is dominated by synchrotron losses as in BL Lac objects.

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