On the Observational Difference between the Accretion Disk–Corona Connections among Super- and Sub-Eddington Accreting Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

We present a systematic X-ray and multiwavelength study of a sample of 47 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with reverberation mapping measurements. This sample includes 21 super-Eddington accreting AGNs and 26 sub-Eddington accreting AGNs. Using high-state observations with simultaneous X-ray and UV/optical measurements, we investigate whether super-Eddington accreting AGNs exhibit different accretion disk–corona connections compared to sub-Eddington accreting AGNs. We find tight correlations between the X-ray-to-UV/optical spectral slope parameter ( α OX ) and the monochromatic luminosity at 2500 Å ( L 2500Å ) for both the super- and sub-Eddington subsamples. The best-fit α OX – L 2500Å relations are consistent overall, indicating that super-Eddington accreting AGNs are not particularly X-ray weak in general compared to sub-Eddington accreting AGNs. We find dependences of α OX on both the Eddington ratio ( L Bol / L Edd ) and black hole mass ( M BH ) parameters for our full sample. A multivariate linear regression analysis yields , with a scatter similar to that of the α OX – L 2500Å relation. The hard (rest-frame >2 keV) X-ray photon index (Γ) is strongly correlated with L Bol / L Edd for the full sample and the super-Eddington subsample, but these two parameters are not significantly correlated for the sub-Eddington subsample. A fraction of super-Eddington accreting AGNs show strong X-ray variability, probably due to small-scale gas absorption, and we highlight the importance of employing high-state (intrinsic) X-ray radiation to study the accretion disk–corona connections in AGNs.