The coronal parameters of local Seyfert galaxies

Abstract

One of the open problems for AGN is the nature of the primary X-ray emission: It is likely due to Comptonization of soft UV photons, but the optical depth and temperature of the emitting corona were largely unknown before the launch of the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). It is the first focusing hard X-ray telescope on orbit, ∼ 100 times more sensitive in the 10-79 keV band compared to previous observatories, enabling the study of AGN at high energies with high precision. We present and discuss the results on the hot corona parameters of active galactic nuclei that have been recently measured with NuSTAR (often in coordination with XMM-Newton, Suzaku, or wift) with unprecedented accuracy, in a number of local Seyfert galaxies.