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We report a strong soft X-ray excess in the BL-Lacartae γ-ray blazar OJ 287 during the long exposure in May 2015, amongst two of the latest XMM-Newton observations performed in May 2015 and 2018. In case of May 2015 observation, a logparabola model fits the EPIC-pn data well while a logparabola plus powerlaw describes the overall simultaneous optical to X-ray spectra, suggesting the excess as the synchrotron tail. This interpretation, however, is inconsistent with the observed spectral break between near-infrared and optical spectra, attributed to standard disk around a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Based on this, we considered two commonly invoked accretion disk based models in AGNs to explain the soft excess: the cool Comptonization component in the accretion disk and the blurred reflection from the partially ionized accretion disk. We found that both cool Comptonization and blurred reflection models provide equally good fit to the data and favor a super-heavy SMBH of mass ∼ 10 10 M ⊙ . Further investigation of about a month long simultaneous X-ray and UV pointing observations revealed a delayed UV emission with respect to the 1.5-10 keV band, favoring X-ray reprocessing phenomenon as the dominant mechanism. The results suggest that the soft excess is probably caused by strong light bending close to the SMBH. The detected soft excess in 2015 data and its disappearance in 2018 data is also consistent with the presence of accretion disk emission, inferred from the NIR-optical spectral break between

We study multi-wavelength variability of a bare Seyfert 1 galaxy Fairall 9 using Swift monitoring observations consisting of 165 usable pointings spanning nearly two years and covering six UV/optical bands and X-rays. Fairall 9 is highly variable in all bands though the variability amplitude decreases from X-ray to optical bands.The variations in the X-ray and UV/optical bands are strongly correlated. Our reverberation mapping analysis using the JAVALIN tool shows that the variation in the UV/optical bands lag behind the variations in the X-ray band by ∼ 2 − 10 days.These lag measurements strongly suggest that the optical/UV variations are mainly caused by variations in the X-rays, and the origin of most of the optical/UV emission is X-ray reprocessing. The observed lags are found to vary as τ ∝ λ 1.36±0.13 , consistent with the prediction, τ ∝ λ 4/3 , for X-ray reprocessing in a standard accretion disc. However, the predicted lags for an standard accretion disc with X-ray reprocessing using black hole mass (M BH ∼ 2.6 × 10 8 M ⊙ ) estimated from the reverberation mapping of broad emission lines and accretion rate relative to the Eddington rate (ṁ E = 0.02) are shorter than the observed lags. These observations suggest that accretion disc in Fairall 9 is larger than that predicted by the standard disc model, and confirm similar findings in a few other Seyfert 1 galaxies such as NGC 5548.

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We present a detailed multi-frequency analysis of an intense monitoring programme of Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4593 over a duration of nearly for a month with Swift observatory. We used 185 pointings to study the variability in six ultraviolet/optical and two soft (0.3-1.5 keV) and hard X-ray (1.5-10 keV) bands. The amplitude of the observed variability is found to decrease from high energy to low energy (X-ray to optical) bands. Count-count plots of ultraviolet/optical bands with hard X-rays clearly suggest the presence of a mixture of two major components: (i) highly variable component such as hard X-ray emission and (ii) slowly varying disc-like component. The variations observed in the ultraviolet/optical emission are strongly correlated with the hard X-ray band. Cross-correlation analysis provides the lags for the longer wavelengths compared to the hard X-rays. Such lags clearly suggest that the changes in the ultraviolet/optical bands follow the variations in the hard X-ray band. This implies the observed variation in longer wavelengths is due to X-ray reprocessing. Though, the measured lag spectrum (lag vs. wavelength) is well described by λ 4/3 as expected from the standard disc model, the observed lags are found to be longer than the predicted values from standard disc model. This implies that the actual size of the disc of NGC 4593 is larger than the estimated size of standard thin disc as reported in AGN such as NGC 5548, Fairall 9.

We study X-ray and UV emission from the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy II Zw 177 using a 137 ks long and another 13 ks short XMM-Newton observation performed in 2012 and 2001, respectively. Both observations show soft X-ray excess emission contributing 76.9 ± 4.9% in 2012 and 58.8 ± 10.2% in 2001 in the 0.3 − 2 keV band.We find that both blurred reflection from an ionized disc and Comptonized disc emission describe the observed soft excess well. Time-resolved spectroscopy on scales of ∼ 20 ks reveals strong correlation between the soft excess and the powerlaw components. The fractional variability amplitude F var derived from EPIC-pn lightcurves at different energy bands is nearly constant (F var ∼ 20%). This is in contrast to other AGNs where the lack of short term variation in soft X-ray excess emission has been attributed to intense light bending in the framework of the "lamppost" model. Thus, the variations in powerlaw emission are most likely intrinsic to corona rather than just due to the changes of height of compact corona. The variable UV emission (F var ∼ 1%) is uncorrelated to any of the X-ray components on short timescales suggesting that the UV emission is not dominated by the reprocessed emission. The gradual observed decline in the UV emission in 2012 may be related to the secular decline due to the changes in the accretion rate. In this case, the short term X-ray variability is not due to the changes in the seed photons but intrinsic to the hot corona.

The broadband X-ray emission from type 1 active galactic nuclei, dominated by a powerlaw continuum, is thought to arise from repeated inverse Compton scattering of seed optical/UV photons by energetic electrons in a hot corona. The seed optical/UV photons are assumed to arise from an accretion disc but a direct observational evidence has remained elusive. Here we report the discovery of variations in the UV emission preceding the variations in the X-ray emission based on ∼ 100 ks XMM-Newton observations of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 493. We find the UV emission to lead by ∼ 5 ks relative to the X-ray emission. The UV lead is consistent with the time taken by the UV photons to travel from the location of their origin in the accretion disc to the hot corona and the time required for repeated inverse Compton scattering converting the UV photons into X-ray photons. Our findings provide first direct observational evidence for the accretion disc to be responsible for the seed photons for thermal Comptonization in the hot corona, and constrain the size of the corona to be ∼ 20r g .

We report the reemergence of a new broadband emission through a detailed and systematic study of the multiwavelength spectral and temporal behavior of OJ 287 after its first-ever reported very high energy activity in 2017 to date, which includes the second-highest X-ray flux of the source. The source shows high optical to X-ray flux variations, accompanied mainly by strong spectral changes. The optical to X-ray flux variations are correlated and simultaneous except for two durations when they are anticorrelated. The flux variations, however, are anticorrelated with the X-ray spectral state while correlated with optical–UV (ultraviolet). Weekly binned Fermi-LAT data around the duration of the highest X-ray activity show a few detections with a log-parabola model but none with a power law, yet the extracted LAT spectral energy distribution of the high-activity duration for both the models is similar and shows a hardening above 1 GeV. Further, near-infrared data indicate strong spectral change, resembling a thermal component. Overall, the combined optical to gamma-ray broadband spectrum establishes the observed variations to a new high-energy-peaked broadband emission component, similar to the one seen during the highest reported X-ray flux state of the source in 2017. The observed activities indicate some peculiar features that seem to be characteristic of this emission component, while its appearance a few years around the claimed ∼12 yr optical outbursts strongly indicates a connection between the two.