A decade of RXTE Seyfert Observations

Barbara Mattson (UMD/Goddard Space Flight Center/ADNET) , Kimberly Weaver (NASA/GSFC), Christopher Reynolds (UMD)

We report results of a systematic X-ray spectral variability study of bright Seyfert galaxies observed by the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The RXTE public archive contains data for 40 Seyfert galaxies spanning timescales from weeks to years. We have developed a data pipeline to automate the data reduction. The pipeline produces a series of time-resolved spectra for each source. The sample consists of 450 time-resolved spectra from 20 Seyfert 1/1.2 and 190 spectra from 13 Seyfert 1.9/2.0 galaxies. Each spectrum is fitted to a model with an intrinsic powerlaw X-ray spectrum produced close to the central black hole that is reprocessed and absorbed by material around the black hole. To test the robustness of our results, we performed Monte Carlo simulations of the spectral sample. For the Seyfert 1 galaxies, we find a complex relationship between the iron line equivalent width (EW) and the underlying powerlaw index, which may be driven by dilution of a disk spectrum (which includes the narrow iron line) by a beamed jet component and, hence, could be used as a diagnostic of jet-dominance.