Discovery of high frequency iron K lags in Ark 564 and Mrk 335

E. Kara, A.C. Fabian, E.M. Cackett, P. Uttley, D.R. Wilkins and A. Zoghbi, 2013, MNRAS 434, 1129-1137

We use archival XMM-Newton observations of Ark 564 and Mrk 335 to calculate the frequency-dependent time lags for these two well-studied sources. We discover high-frequency Fe K lags in both sources, indicating that the red wing of the line precedes the rest-frame energy by roughly 100 and 150 s for Ark 564 and Mrk 335, respectively. Including these two new sources, Fe K reverberation lags have been observed in seven Seyfert galaxies. We examine the low-frequency lag-energy spectrum, which is smooth, and shows no feature of reverberation, as would be expected if the low-frequency lags were produced by distant reflection off circumnuclear material. The clear differences in the low- and high-frequency lag-energy spectra indicate that the lags are produced by two distinct physical processes. Finally, we find that the amplitude of the Fe K lag scales with black hole mass for these seven sources, consistent with a relativistic reflection model where the lag is the light travel delay associated with reflection of continuum photons off the inner disc.

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Modelling the broad Fe Kα reverberation in the AGN NGC 4151

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The origin of the lag spectra observed in AGN: Reverberation and the propagation of X-ray source fluctuations