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XMM-Newton observations of GB B1428+4217: confirmation of intrinsic soft X-ray absorption

M. A. Worsley·A. C. Fabian·A. Celotti·K. Iwasawa
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Abstract

We report the results of XMM-Newton observations of the X-ray bright, radio-loud blazar GB B1428+4217 at a redshift of z=4.72. We confirm the presence of soft X-ray spectral flattening at energies <0.7 keV as reported in previous ROSAT and BeppoSAX observations. At hard X-ray energies the spectrum is consistent with a power-law although we find the spectral slope varied between both XMM-Newton observations and is also significantly different from that reported previously. Whilst we cannot rule-out intrinsic cold absorption to explain the spectral depression, we favour a dust-free warm absorber. Cold absorption requires a column density ~1.4-1.6 x 10^22 cm^-2 whilst a warm absorber could have up to ~10^23 cm^-2 and an ionization parameter ~10^2. The spectrum of GB B1428+4217 shows remarkable parallels with that of the z=4.4 blazar PMN J0525-3343, in which the available evidence is also most consistent with a warm absorber model.

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M. A. Worsley, A. C. Fabian, A. Celotti, K. Iwasawa. 2004-04-15. XMM-Newton observations of GB B1428+4217: confirmation of intrinsic soft X-ray absorption. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07887.x

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