Search for X-Ray Quasiperiodicity of Six AGNs Using the Gaussian Process Method

Abstract

The quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs) found in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are a very interesting observational phenomenon implying an unknown physical mechanism around supermassive black holes. Several AGNs have been found to have QPO phenomena in the X-ray energy band. Long-duration X-ray observations were collected and reduced for six AGNs with a suspected QPO. The Gaussian process model celerite was used to fit the light curves and to search for the quasiperiodicity behavior. The power spectral density and parameter posterior distributions of each light curve were calculated with the optimal model. Of the six AGNs, only RE J1034+396 was found to have a QPO of about 3600 s. The other five sources do not show QPO modulation behavior. We propose that a hot spot on the accretion disk is a possible physical mechanism resulting in this quasiperiodic behavior of AGNs.

Keywords

• Active galactic nuclei
• Supermassive black holes
• Time series analysis
• X-ray active galactic nuclei