Paper detail

Absorption Measure Distribution in Mrk 509

In this paper we model the observed absorption measure distribution (AMD) in Mrk 509, which spans three orders of magnitude in ionization level with a single-zone absorber in pressure equilibrium. AMD is usually constructed from observations of narrow absorption lines in radio-quiet active galaxies with warm absorbers. We study the properties of the warm absorber in Mrk~509 using recently published broad-band spectral energy distribution observed with different instruments. This spectrum is an input in radiative transfer computations with full photoionisation treatment using {\sc titan} code. We show that the simplest way to fully reproduce the shape of AMD is to assume that the warm absorber is a single zone under constant total pressure. With this assumption we found theoretical AMD which matches the observed one determined on the basis of 600 ks RGS XMM-Newton spectrum of Mrk~509. The softness of the source spectrum and the important role of the free-free emission breaks the usual degeneracy in the ionization state calculations, and the explicit dependence of the depths of AMD dips on density open a new path to density diagnostic for the warm absorber. In Mrk 509 the implied density is of the order of $10^8$ cm$^{-3}$.