• Accepted Paper

Constraining disk-to-corona power transfer fraction, soft x-ray excess origin, and black hole spin population of type-1 AGN across mass scales

Labani Mallick, Ciro Pinto, John A. Tomsick, Alex G. Markowitz, Andrew C. Fabian, Samar Safi-Harb, James F. Steiner, Fabio Pacucci, and William N. Alston

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 1 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9ht1-98c5

Abstract

Understanding the nature of the accretion disk, its interplay with the X-ray corona, and assessing black hole spin demographics remain open challenges in astrophysics. In this paper, we examine the predictions of the standard α-disk model, origin of the puzzling soft X-ray excess, and measure the black hole spin parameter by applying an updated high-density disk reflection model to the XMM-Newton/NuSTAR broadband (0.3–78~keV) X-ray spectra of a sample of 11 Type-1 AGN. Our Bayesian analysis confirms that a variable-density relativistic disk reflection model with a broken power-law emissivity profile can simultaneously fit the soft X-ray excess, broad iron~K line emission, and Compton hump in 3 out of 11 AGN. For the remaining sources, a distinct warm Comptonization component is still required, which supports a hybrid origin for the soft X-ray excess. The measured temperature and optical depth of the warm corona span nearly the entire theoretically allowed range, with median values of 0.430.18+0.40~keV and 12.53.9+3.1, respectively. Our first systematic calculation of the disk-to-corona power transfer fraction reveals that the fraction of power released from the accretion disk into the hot corona spans a wide range, with a sample median of 0.680.25+0.25. The sample median values for the hot coronal plasma temperature and optical depth are 5412+11~keV and 0.980.28+0.22, respectively. Finally, through both hard X-ray (3–78~keV) and broadband (0.3–78~keV) relativistic reflection spectroscopy, we systematically constrain the black hole spin parameter across the mass scales of $\log(M_{\rm BH}/M_{\odot}) \sim 5.5-9.0$, thereby increasing or refining the available spin measurements in the AGN population by $$20%.

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