We present a high density disc reflection spectral analysis of a sample of 17 Seyfert 1 galaxies to study the inner disc densities at different black hole mass scales and accretion rates. All the available XMM–Newton observations in the archive are used. OM observations in the optical/UV band are used to estimate their accretion rates. We find that 65 per cent of sources in our sample show a disc density significantly higher than ne = 1015 cm−3, which was assumed in previous reflection-based spectral analyses. The best-fitting disc densities show an anticorrelation with black hole mass and mass accretion rate. High density disc reflection model can successfully explain the soft excess emission and significantly reduce inferred iron abundances. We also compare our black hole spin and disc inclination angle measurements with previous analyses.

We present a detailed X-ray timing analysis of the highly variable NLS1 galaxy, IRAS 13224–3809. The source was recently monitored for 1.5 Ms with XMM-Newton which, combined with 500 ks archival data, makes this the best studied NLS1 galaxy in X-rays to date. We apply standard time- and Fourier-domain techniques in order to understand the underlying variability process. The source flux is not distributed lognormally, as expected for all types of accreting sources. The first non-linear rms-flux relation for any accreting source in any waveband is found, with rms∝flux^2/3. The light curves exhibit significant strong non-stationarity, in addition to that caused by the rms-flux relation, and are fractionally more variable at lower source flux. The power spectrum is estimated down to ∼10⁻⁷ Hz and consists of multiple peaked components: a low-frequency break at ∼10⁻⁵ Hz, with slope α < 1 down to low frequencies; an additional component breaking at ∼10⁻³ Hz. Using the high-frequency break we estimate the black hole mass $${M_{\rm {BH}}}= [0.5-2] \times 10^{6} {M_{\odot}}$$, and mass accretion rate in Eddington units, $${_{m}^{.}}{_{\rm Edd}}\,{\gtrsim}\,1$$. The broadband PSD and accretion rate make IRAS 13224–3809 a likely analogue of Very-high/Intermediate state black hole X-ray binaries. The non-stationarity is manifest in the PSD with the normalisation of the peaked components increasing with decreasing source flux, as well as the low-frequency peak moving to higher frequencies. We also detect a narrow coherent feature in the soft band PSD at 7 × 10⁻⁴ Hz, modelled with a Lorentzian the feature has Q ∼ 8 and an rms ∼ 3 %. We discuss the implication of these results for accretion of matter onto black holes.

Ultrafast outflows (UFOs) are the most extreme winds launched by active galactic nuclei (AGN) due to their mildly-relativistic speeds (∼0.1 − 0.3c) and are thought to significantly contribute to galactic evolution via AGN feedback. Their nature and launching mechanism are however not well understood. Recently, we have discovered the presence of a variable UFO in the narrow-line Seyfert 1 IRAS 13224−3809. The UFO varies in response to the brightness of the source. In this work we perform flux-resolved X-ray spectroscopy to study the variability of the UFO and found that the ionisation parameter is correlated with the luminosity. In the brightest states the gas is almost completely ionised by the powerful radiation field and the UFO is hardly detected. This agrees with our recent results obtained with principal component analysis. We might have found the tip of the iceberg: the high ionisation of the outflowing gas may explain why it is commonly difficult to detect UFOs in AGN and possibly suggest that we may underestimate their actual feedback. We have also found a tentative correlation between the outflow velocity and the luminosity, which is expected from theoretical predictions of radiation-pressure driven winds. This trend is rather marginal due to the Fe XXV-XXVI degeneracy. Further work is needed to break such degeneracy through time-resolved spectroscopy.

We present XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, Swift and Hubble Space Telescope observations of the Narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 335 in a protracted low state in 2018 and 2019. The X-ray flux is at the lowest level so far observed, and the extremely low continuum flux reveals a host of soft X-ray emission lines from photoionised gas. The simultaneous UV flux drop suggests that the variability is intrinsic to the source, and we confirm this with broad-band X-ray spectroscopy. The dominance of the soft X-ray lines at low energies and distant reflection at high energies, is therefore due to the respective emission regions being located far enough from the X-ray source that they have not yet seen the flux drop. Between the two XMM-Newton spectra, taken 6 months apart, the emission line ratio in the O vii triplet changes drastically. We attribute this change to a drop in the ionisation of intervening warm absorption, which means that the absorber must cover a large fraction of the line emitting region, and extend much further from the black hole than previously assumed. The HST spectrum, taken in 2018, shows that new absorption features have appeared on the blue wings of C iii*, Lyα, N v, Si iv and C iv, likely due to absorbing gas cooling in response to the low flux state.