Dramatic Changes in the Observed Velocity of the Accretion Disk Wind in MCG-03-58-007 Are Revealed by XMM-Newton and NuSTAR

Abstract

Past X-ray observations of the nearby Seyfert 2 MCG-03-58-007 revealed the presence of a powerful and highly variable disk wind, where two possible phases outflowing with v out1 / c ∼ −0.07 and v out2 / c ∼ −0.2 were observed. Multi-epoch X-ray observations, covering the period from 2010 to 2018, showed that the lower-velocity component is persistent, as it was detected in all the observations, while the faster phase outflowing with v out2 / c ∼ −0.2 appeared to be more sporadic. Here we present the analysis of a new monitoring campaign of MCG-03-58-007 performed in 2019 May–June and consisting of four simultaneous XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations. We confirm that the disk wind in MCG-03-58-007 is persistent, as it is detected in all the observations, and powerful, having a kinetic power that ranges between 0.5% and 10% of the Eddington luminosity. The highly ionized wind (log( ξ /erg cm s −1 ) ∼ 5) is variable in both the opacity and, remarkably in its velocity. This is the first time where we have observed a substantial variability of the outflowing velocity in a disk wind, which dropped from v out / c ∼ −0.2 (as measured in the first three observations) to v out / c ∼ −0.074 in just 16 days. We conclude that such a dramatic and fast variability of the outflowing velocity could be due to the acceleration of the wind, as recently proposed by Mizumoto et al. Here, the faster wind, seen in the first three observations, is already accelerated to v out / c ∼ −0.2, while in the last observation our line of sight intercepts only the slower, pre-accelerated streamline.