Relativistic Fe Kα line revealed in the composite X-ray spectrum of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies - do their black holes have averagely low or intermediate spins?

Abstract

While a broad profile of the Fe Kα emission line is frequently found in the X-ray spectra of typical Seyfert galaxies, the situation is unclear in the case of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) - an extreme subset which are generally thought to harbour less massive black holes with higher accretion rates. In this paper, the ensemble property of the Fe Kα line in NLS1s is investigated by stacking the X-ray spectra of a large sample of 51 NLS1s observed with XMM-Newton. The composite X-ray spectrum reveals a prominent, broad emission feature over 4-7 keV, characteristic of the broad Fe Kα line. In addition, there is an indication for a possible superimposing narrow(unresolved) line, either emission or absorption, corresponding to Fe XXVI or Fe XXV, respectively. The profile of the broad emission feature can well be fitted with relativistic broad-line models, with the line energy consistent either with 6.4 keV (i.e. neutral Fe) or with 6.67 keV (i.e. highly ionized Fe), in the case of the narrow line being emission and absorption, respectively. Interestingly, there are tentative indications for low or intermediate values of the average spins of the black holes (a < 0.84), as inferred from the profile of the composite broad line. If the observed feature is indeed a broad line rather than resulting from partial covering absorption, our results suggest that a relativistic Fe line may in fact be common in NLS1s, and there are tentative indications that black holes in NLS1s may not spin very fast in general.