An X-ray Luminosity-dependent "Changing-look" Phenomenon in UGC\,3223 [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2007.14547


The nature of the rare “Changing-look” (CL) phenomenon in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is still under debate at current stage. We here present \it Swift/\rm XRT and UVOT follow-up observations of UGC\,3223, a newly discovered repeat CL-AGN with type transitions of $\mathrm{S1.5\rightarrow S2 \rightarrow S1.8}$ occurring in a period of about 30 years. By comparing the values previously reported in the \it ROSAT \rm All-sky Survey and in the second Swift-XRT Point Source catalog, we clearly find that the X-ray flux tightly follows the optical spectral transition, in which a spectral type closer to a Seyfert 1 type is associated with a higher X-ray flux. An invariable X-ray spectral shape is, however, found in the CL phenomenon of the object. An extremely low Eddington ratio of $\sim2\times10^{-4}$ can be obtained from the X-ray luminosity for its Seyfert 2 state, which suggests a favor of the disk-wind broad-line region model in explaining the CL phenomenon. A variation of the total UV emission is not revealed when compared to the previous \it GALEX \rm NUV observation, since the UVOT images indicate that $\sim90$\% UV emission comes from the intensive star formation in the host galaxy.

Read this paper on arXiv…

J. Wang, D. Xu and J. Wei
Thu, 30 Jul 20
-612/71

Comments: 9 pages, 3 figures and 3 tables, accepted by ApJ