Strong constraints on a super-Eddington accretion flow: XMM-Newton observations of an intermediate-mass black hole

Abstract

RX J1140.1+0307 is a Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) with one of the lowest black holemasses known in an AGN (M= 106 M⊙).We show results from two new XMM-Newton observations, exhibiting soft 2-10 keV spectra, a strong excess at lower energies, and fast X-ray variability which is typical of this class of AGN. The soft excess can be equally well fit using either lowtemperature Comptonization or highly smeared, ionized reflection models, but we additionally consider the fast X-ray variability to produce covariance, lag and coherence spectra to show that the low-temperature Comptonization model gives a better description of the break in variability properties between soft and hard X-rays. Both these models require an additional component at the softest energies, as expected from the accretion disc. However, standard disc models cannot connect this to the optical/UV emission from the outer disc unless the mass is underestimated by an order of magnitude. The variable optical and far UV emission instead suggests that L/LEdd ~ 10 through the outer disc, in which case advection and/or wind losses are required to explain the observed broad-band spectral energy distribution. This implies that the accretion geometry close to the black hole is unlikely to be a flat disc as assumed in the recent X-ray reverberation mapping techniques.