Suzaku observations of Markarian 335: evidence for a distributed reflector

Abstract

We report on a 151-ks net exposure Suzaku observation of the narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 335. The 0.5–40 keV spectrum contains a broad Fe line, a strong soft excess below about 2 keV and a Compton hump around 20–30 keV. We find that a model consisting of a power law and two reflectors provides the best fit to the time-averaged spectrum. In this model, an ionized, heavily blurred, inner reflector produces most of the soft excess, while an almost neutral outer reflector (outside ∼ 40 r g ) produces most of the Fe line emission. The spectral variability of the observation is characterized by spectral hardening at very low count rates. In terms of our power-law + two-reflector model it seems like this hardening is mainly caused by pivoting of the power law. The rms spectrum of the entire observation has the curved shape commonly observed in active galactic nuclei, although the shape is significantly flatter when an interval which does not contain any deep dip in the light curve is considered. We also examine a previous 133-ks XMM–Newton observation of Mrk 335. We find that the XMM–Newton spectrum can be fitted with a similar two-reflector model as the Suzaku data and we confirm that the rms spectrum of the observation is flat. The flat rms spectra, as well as the high-energy data from the Suzaku PIN detector, disfavour an absorption origin for the soft excess in Mrk 335.