The changing-look AGN NGC 1566 in quiescence with XMM-Newton: a nuclear starburst and an AGN competing in power?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Star formation accretion on to the super massive black holes (SMBHs) and feedback processes link the evolution of galaxies with their SMBHs. X-ray observations in the imaging and spectral regime have revealed to be an important tool to study the connection between nuclear activity and circumnuclear star formation in nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN). X-ray spectral diagnostics can lead to disentangle, which is the ionization mechanism in the central kiloparsecs of nearby AGN. In this paper, we investigate, by means of XMM-Newton observations, the nuclear X-ray emission of the changing-look AGN NGC 1566 during its quiescent state. European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) soft X-ray images show an extended arm-like morphology. A detailed analysis of the high-resolution Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) and medium resolution EPIC spectra shows that the material concentrated in the central kiloparsecs region is not in the photoionization-dominated regime while the presence of collisionally ionized plasma is needed to explain the observed spectral features. In the inner region (∼1.5 kpc), the brightness of the collisionally ionized gas is comparable to the brightness of the photoionized gas: the inner region hosts a luminous starburst whose ionized gas shows up bright in the X-rays when the AGN is in quiescence.