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# SCUBA observations of the host galaxies of four dark gamma-ray bursts

## 1 Introduction

### 1.1 Gamma-ray Bursts

It is generally now accepted that the afterglow emission resulting from (long-duration, soft-spectrum) gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be explained by an ultra-relativistic shock-wave expanding into a surrounding medium (Mészáros & Rees, 1997; van Paradijs et al., 2000; Mészáros, 2001). The precise nature of the progenitor systems is not a settled issue. The two most popular theories both involve stellar remnants: the collapsar/hypernova model, in which a single massive progenitor star undergoes core collapse (Woosley, 1993; Paczyński, 1998); and the binary merger theory, in which two massive stellar remnants, such as neutron stars, merge (Lattimer & Schramm, 1976; Paczyński, 1986). Both of these scenarios may be able to explain the energetics of the explosion that produces the GRBs, particularly if they are beamed, since the energies of GRBs are comparable to those involved in the formation of typical stellar-progenitor black holes.

Recently, the collapsar/hypernova model has gained support from three sets of observations: firstly, it was confirmed that the positions of some GRBs accurately localized by the observation of optical and/or radio afterglows, were found to be within star-forming regions of their host galaxies (Bloom et al., 2002), which themselves are frequently starburst galaxies (Sokolov et al., 2000). This is supported by X-ray determinations of the HI column density along the line of sight to GRBs, which is consistent with their residing in GRBs (Galama & Wijers, 2001). During their creation, it is likely that the massive stellar remnants required in the binary merger scenario would receive a substantial ‘kick’ velocity, so that the merger event causing the GRB would take place outside of the star-forming region of the host galaxy (Galama & Wijers, 2001). Also, the delay required between formation of the remnants and their merger may well be long enough for star formation to have ceased in the host, suggesting that the host galaxy would no longer be luminous. Hence the position measurements of Bloom et al. (2002) support the single massive progenitor theory. Note though, that one should be wary of a potential selection effect: the detection of a GRB afterglow requires a certain minimum density in the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM), and so GRBs may only be identifiable when they occur inside galaxies (Chevalier & Li, 2000).

Secondly, in a few cases, optical afterglows of GRBs have been seen to contain a secondary brightening in flux after a few weeks (Kulkarni et al., 1998; Bloom et al., 1999; Reichart, 1999; Galama et al., 2000; Lazzati et al., 2001). This flux increase, though often not very significant, has been attributed to a supernova occurring simultaneously with the GRB, although alternative ideas have been postulated, such as dust echoes (Esin & Blandford, 2000) or interactions of the GRB shock wave with wind-driven density structures in the surrounding ISM (Ramirez-Ruiz et al., 2001). Supernovae associated with GRBs are compatible with the single progenitor collapsar/hypernova model rather than the merger hypothesis.

Finally, the detection of iron features in the X-ray afterglows suggest the presence of an iron-enriched ISM surrounding the GRB progenitor (Amati et al., 2000; Piro et al., 2000; Yoshida et al., 2001). This high iron mass is consistent with ejecta from a massive stellar progenitor.

If the hypernova theory is the correct explanation for long-duration GRBs, then there should be a direct link between GRBs and high-mass star formation activity. Since the gamma-ray emission from the initial explosion is not attenuated by dust, and can be detected from high redshifts, GRBs should be unbiased tracers pointing to star formation activity wherever massive stars are living and dying (Krumholz et al., 1998; Blain & Natarajan, 2000; Berger et al., 2001b; Frail et al., 2002; Ramirez-Ruiz et al., 2002).

### 1.2 SCUBA galaxies

Since the commissioning of the SCUBA instrument (Holland et al., 1999) in 1997 on the JCMT on Mauna Kea, a new era of submillimetre (submm) cosmology has been possible (see, e.g. Blain et al. 1999a; Smail et al. 2002). In particular, the discovery of a substantial population of dust-enshrouded ‘SCUBA galaxies’ has launched a debate regarding observational estimates of the global star formation rate in the Universe. SCUBA traces the interstellar dust in galaxies (with a temperature of the order of tens of degrees Kelvin), which may be heated by the UV light emitted by OB stars and/or a hosted AGN. The relative contributions of starlight and AGN to dust-heating in a particular galaxy are hard to determine precisely, but studies using *Chandra* to observe hard X-rays from submm-selected galaxies suggest that about 20 per cent of the sample contain a detectable AGN (Bautz et al., 2000; Fabian et al., 2000; Almaini et al., 2001).

Therefore, it is likely that the luminous dust emission from SCUBA galaxies is powered predominantly by star formation. In this case, because of the large bolometric luminosities of the SCUBA galaxies (at least $`10^{12}L_{\mathrm{}}`$), they make a substantial contribution to overall star formation activity in the high-redshift universe, comparable to or greater than that of optically-selected galaxies (Blain et al., 1999a). Thus, they are good candidates to be hosts of many GRBs, if GRBs are indeed associated with the death of high-mass stars. The optical properties of SCUBA galaxies, where they are well-located, indicate that most are very faint, with $`R>\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}25}`$ (Smail et al., 2002), not dissimilar to the GRB host galaxy population as a whole (Djorgovski et al., 2001). It is likely that about 10–20 per cent of the star-formation activity in the high-redshift universe takes place in submm galaxies brighter than 2 mJy. As a result, perhaps 1 in 5 GRBs should reside in such objects. This point is examined further in Section 4.

### 1.3 Submm observations of GRBs

This paper describes our submm SCUBA observations of the host galaxies of four GRBs. To increase the chances of finding dusty SCUBA galaxies in this pilot program, we selected GRBs which were ‘dark’ in the sense that their afterglows were undetected in the optical despite deep, rapid searches. Estimates vary, but optical afterglows have been searched for and not found in roughly 30-50 per cent of GRBs with X-ray afterglows. In many cases the non-detection may simply be because the searches were not deep or rapid enough (Galama & Wijers 2001), but in some instances it is clear that the optical afterglows are genuinely underluminous (Groot et al. 1998, van Paradijs et al. 2000, Lazzati et al. 2001a, Ramirez-Ruiz et al. 2002). An obvious possibility is that these bursts are heavily obscured by dust. Since GRBs are expected to destroy any dust in their vicinity (Waxman & Draine, 2000; Fruchter et al., 2001; Reichart & Yost, 2001; Venemans & Blain, 2001), the obscuration would have to be due to dust elsewhere along the line of sight, as might well be expected in very dusty submm-bright galaxies.

Note that we did not attempt to observe GRB afterglows in the submm. Target of Opportunity programs to observe GRB afterglows are underway at the JCMT and IRAM 30-m telescopes (Smith et al., 1999, 2001; Frail et al., 2002). Our observations took place long enough after the initial explosion for only the host galaxy emission to be detectable.

There have been two previous SCUBA detections of a GRB host galaxy. The first was found serendipitously during a submm afterglow search (Frail et al., 2002) for a GRB that had an optical afterglow (GRB 010222). This suggests that the GRB was located in a luminous dusty galaxy, but either in a relatively dust-free region or near the edge of the galaxy, so that the explosion could clear out any dust along the line of sight. Also, Berger et al. (2001b) reported the results of a successful targeted search for submm emission from GRB 000418. This too had an optical transient identification. Another relevant detection was that of a GRB host in the radio (GRB 980703; Berger et al. 2001a), whose flux was claimed to be caused by a large star-formation rate rather than AGN activity, based on optical spectroscopy and the absence of radio variability. However, a deeply embedded AGN within a dust- and gas-rich galaxy could plausibly contribute the emission from this galaxy, especially as the radio source is located very near to the nucleus of the host galaxy.

## 2 Observations

Observations were made using the 850-$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ photometry pixel on the SCUBA array (Holland et al., 1999). They are summarized in Table 1. Simultaneous observations were made with the 450-$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ photometry pixel, but weather conditions and/or array noise were never good enough to yield useful data. Observations were made in the standard photometry mode, using a 7 Hz, 60″ ‘chop’ in azimuth to provide a blank-sky reference and a further telescope ‘nod’ to produce a measure of any sky gradient. Each set of photometry observations takes 18 seconds. Column 3 of Table 1 shows the integration time on-source for each GRB. Pointing was checked regularly and was always better than 2.5″, much smaller than the primary beam of the array of 14″at 850 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$. Seeing was monitored, especially around dawn and dusk, and data was only taken when the seeing was less than 1″. Sky transparency was calculated by interpolating between regular skydip values, though the situation was monitored more frequently with data from the JCMT’s water vapour monitor. The average sky opacity at 850 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ during each source’s observations, $`\tau _{850\mu \mathrm{m}}`$, is given in column 4 of table 1. For flux calibration, identical observations were made of the planets Mars and Uranus, and where necessary the secondary flux calibrator CRL 618. We found no significant deviations between the observed and expected fluxes of these standard objects.

Unfortunately, since the observations were made, two of the GRBs in our sample have been found to have been wrongly located: GRBs 001109 and 001025. In the case of GRB 001109, the radio-located position which we observed is now thought to correspond to a faint constant radio source (Berger & Frail, 2001), and thus to be a mis-identification of the GRB afterglow. We detected a net positive flux of $`(1.89\pm 1.40)`$ mJy from this source, consistent with its likely identification as a high-redshift star-forming galaxy (Berger & Frail, 2001). For GRB 001025, *XMM* error box S1 was observed, since it contained a candidate host galaxy (Hjorth priv. comm.), but subsequently Hurley (priv. comm.) has calculated that this error box lies outside a revised *IPN* annulus. Hence the results of the observations of both these objects are not included in the rest of this paper.

## 3 Data Reduction

The data were reduced using the standard Starlink SURF procedures (Jenness & Lightfoot, 2000). Particular care was taken over the removal of atmospheric noise, since the expected low fluxes of the sources make this an important factor. This sky-noise removal is possible using the other bolometers on the array, assuming that they are pointing at the blank sky. Following Isaak et al. (2002), the median value of the signal from the reference bolometers was used rather than the mean. Usually the reference bolometers used are the inner ring on the 850-$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ array. For the October 2001 observations (see table 1), however, the whole array suffered from elevated noise. Particular care was taken to choose only those bolometers with normal noise levels for this final sky-removal stage, and the bolometer noise values were measured far more frequently than usual. The results presented have been clipped at the 3$`\sigma `$ level, though this generally had little effect on the final results.

## 4 Results and Discussion

Table 2 shows the overall weighted mean at 850 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ for each of the four reliable sources observed. The overall, weighted mean flux for all four sources is -0.37 $`\pm `$ 0.82 mJy.

Models for the evolution of the star formation rate in dusty galaxies can be used to predict the likely 850-$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ fluxes of GRB hosts (Blain et al., 1999a; Blain et al., 1999b; Blain & Natarajan, 2000; Ramirez-Ruiz et al., 2002), as shown in Fig. 1. We assume that: dust in SCUBA galaxies is predominantly heated by high-mass stars; GRB rates are tied to the rate of formation of high-mass stars; and most high-redshift star formation activity is enshrouded by dust. Results for two models based on infrared and submm data are presented, a simple parametric model of the evolution of low-redshift galaxies (BSIK: Blain et al. 1999a) and a model based on luminous hierarchical merging of galaxies (BJSLKI: Blain et al. 1999b). These models both provide a good representation of the evolution of dusty galaxies, measured in other observations. About 20 per cent of *all* GRB host galaxies are expected to have fluxes above the SCUBA confusion limit for detection of 2 mJy; about 10 per cent are expected to have fluxes greater than 5 mJy. In general, we predict an average across *all* sources of 0.9 mJy. The solid histogram shows the result of our observations, and the dotted histograms define the $`\pm 1\sigma `$ errors in flux.

It is clear from Fig. 1 that the errors on our results are consistent with the predictions of the galaxy evolution models, and that the overall mean flux is within $`2\sigma `$ of the expected value. GRB 000210 is clearly our best candidate for a detection, but only at a significance of about $`2\sigma `$. However, observations of GRB 000210 suffered from the raised array noise discussed in section 3, and from its low elevation from Mauna Kea. Hence, the atmospheric noise for GRB 000210 was greater than for our other sources.

Note that we purposefully chose a selection bias that should have increased our chances of finding dusty GRB hosts, by observing ‘dark bursts’. Since we did not see any increase in our detection rate, alternative explanations are necessary for the lack of optical afterglow detections. We now look briefly at the four reliable GRBs in our sample in more depth.

### 4.1 Individual Sources

#### 4.1.1 GRB 981226

Three early candidates for the optical afterglow of GRB 981226 (Castro-Tirado et al., 1998; Galama et al., 1998; Wozniak et al., 1998) were rejected upon the location of a radio afterglow (Frail et al., 1999). The limit on the optical afterglow is therefore R $`>`$ 23.5 at 10 hours after the alert (Lindgren et al., 1998). Later HST/STIS and VLA imaging has located the probable host galaxy (Holland et al., 2000).

The multi-wavelength afterglow emission from GRB 981226 provides some clues. The X-ray afterglow was found to have a double-peaked structure followed by a rapid decay (Frontera et al., 2000). Also, Frail et al. (1999) noted a rapid decline in the radio afterglow. Taken together, the X-ray, optical and radio afterglow behaviour may all be explained by a complicated density structure in the ISM around the GRB. In particular, a cavity in the ISM density would explain the rapid X-ray and radio decays, and would predict a similarly fast optical decay, meaning that the optical afterglow searches were too slow/shallow to detect the emission. Such a structure could be produced by the mass loss phases that massive stars (which are of course plausible GRB progenitors) are known to go through in their post main sequence lives (Chevalier & Li, 2000; Ramirez-Ruiz et al., 2001). Hence, there may be no need to infer the presence of dust around this GRB. Other suggestions for rapid decays have been proposed which also do not rely on the presence of dust, such as the effects of jet structure (Frail et al., 2001; Panaitescu & Kumar, 2001).

Our non-detection is consistent with the brief weather-affected SCUBA afterglow search for this GRB by Smith et al. (1999).

#### 4.1.2 GRB 990506

GRB 990506 appears to have some similarities with GRB 981226. Again it had a very rapidly decaying radio transient (Taylor et al., 2000). The optical transient was not detected at R = 19 after 1 hour (Zhu & Zhang, 1999), nor to R = 23.5 after 11 hours (Pedersen et al., 1999). The rapid decay of the radio afterglow again suggests that a non-dusty effect, local to the burst, may explain the absence of an optical afterglow. Optical searches for the host have identified it as a very faint and compact galaxy (Bloom et al., 2002).

#### 4.1.3 GRB 970828

GRB 970828 was dark to a depth of R = 23.8 (Groot et al., 1998; Djorgovski et al., 2001) in observations taken from 4 hrs after the burst. A radio flash was observed by the VLA (Djorgovski et al., 2001) and has been interpreted as reverse shock emission. No conventional radio afterglow was detected. Subsequent Keck and *HST* observations of the location of the radio flare revealed an interacting three-component host (Djorgovski et al., 2001), with a possible identification of the GRB location in a dust lane between the two brightest components. In calculations considering both jet and spherical models for the GRB shock geometry, Djorgovski et al. (2001) conclude, based on the X-ray afterglow flux, that a single typical Giant Molecular Cloud could provide all the extinction necessary to fit the upper limits to the optical afterglow flux density. They also note that the Keck and *HST* images indicate that the two host galaxy components on either side of the GRB location are both slightly but not highly reddened, suggesting a low total dust mass in the system.111There are however indications from observations of galaxies known to be very luminous at submm wavelengths (Ivison et al., 2001) that regions where dust emission is strong may not correlate with regions which at optical wavelengths appear to be reddened by strong extinction. Hence the lack of obvious extinction in optical images does not rule out the presence of a large amount of illuminated and heated dust. Our positive but not significant measurement supports the hypothesis that in this case at least, it was not galaxy-wide dust that caused the obscuration of the optical afterglow, but rather a localized cloud or clouds of dust along the line-of-sight, consistent with the X-ray results. Of course, SCUBA’s resolution is such that our observations are sensitive only to the total (illuminated) dust in the entire system.

#### 4.1.4 GRB 000210

GRB 000210 represents our most likely host galaxy detection. Both X-ray and radio transients were found for this source, but no optical transient (R $`>`$ 23.5 at 12.4 hours after the burst, (Gorosabel et al., 2002; Piro et al., 2002)). The X-ray transient did not display the rapid decays found for GRBs 981226 and 990506, leading Piro et al. (2002) to reject the no-dust hypotheses discussed above. Instead they conclude that the most likely scenarios are either obscuration of the optical transient by a clumpy local environment, or line-of-sight obscuration by the whole host galaxy, either of which is allowed by our findings.

## 5 Conclusions

From our small sample of four reliably-identified dark GRBs, we find that the ‘dark bursts’ do not preferentially select dusty host galaxies with very significant amounts of star formation. Looking at some members of our sample, we can explain the lack of optical transients for other reasons. It seems likely that to characterise the optically dark bursts as a physically distinct population of GRBs would be misleading. In each case different circumstances due to a combination of the observing conditions and the physical conditions at the location of the GRB could give rise to the lack of an optical afterglow. If, instead, we view the GRBs included here as four examples of the overall population, we find that the results agree with the distribution predicted assuming that GRBs tracew high-mass star formation. Our lack of a single strong detection implies that no more than 20 per cent of GRB hosts are submm galaxies detectable at a flux density brighter than 5 mJy using SCUBA. In interpreting the results, however, the small sample size inevitably makes it hard to draw any solid conclusions.

Combining our three most significant results with the observations of Smith et al. (1999, 2001), we find that 11 GRB locations have been observed with SCUBA to noise levels $`<`$ 2mJy, and in all but two (GRB 980329, Smith et al. 1999 and GRB 000210, this paper) detection of submm emission from a host galaxy was ruled out. The two GRB hosts detected by SCUBA (Frail et al., 2002; Berger et al., 2001b) had afterglows with optical transients. Therefore, while some GRBs definitely are located in dusty galaxies, the route to selecting these GRBs on the basis of their afterglow data is not yet clear. Since GRBs can only clear dust out to less than 100 pc distance (Fruchter et al., 2001), it would be surprising if optically-selected samples of GRBs are not generally biased against dusty hosts.

However, as noted above, there may be alternative explanations for the optical faintness of some afterglows beyond location in a dusty host galaxy. Our results indicate that radio-located optically-dark bursts seem not to be reliable indicators of luminous, dusty host galaxies. It may be that the physical conditions of the ISM in the densest star forming regions are incompatible with the generation of intense radio emission from GRB shocks. In that regard, it would ultimately be interesting, and certainly possible in the SWIFT era, to study a sample of hosts of purely X-ray selected GRBs, with the hope that the prompter X-ray emission would be less affected by the wider environment of the progenitor.

From the SCUBA observations alone, we cannot separate the possibility that there is little dust in these systems from the possibility that there is a lot of dust but insufficient UV photons to make it glow brightly. Alternatively, the dust may be heated to high temperatures and so cannot be detected by SCUBA at all. The predicted flux of a $`5\times 10^{12}\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{}}`$ galaxy at $`z=1`$ decreases from 20 mJy to 0.08 mJy as the dust temperature increases from 20 K to 80 K (see Fig. 5 in Blain et al. (2002)). Typical dust temperatures for submm-selected objects are thought to be 40 K (Ivison et al., 2000), but a temperature $`60`$ K would be hot enough to prevent such a galaxy being detected above the 2 mJy confusion limit of SCUBA. However, optical colours of the host galaxies of GRBs 970828, 981226 and 000210 (Djorgovski et al., 2001; Frail et al., 1999; Piro et al., 2002) show only modest reddening, to the optical depths that can be probed, and thus perhaps imply little dust overall in the hosts. Ideally, high-resolution observations to locate dust-enshrouded star-formation activity with respect to the location of GRBs need to be made.

The results presented here suggest that a more extensive deep submm survey of GRB hosts is necessary to investigate their far-infrared and submm properties in detail, and this is now underway at the JCMT (Barnard et al., in prep.).

## Acknowledgements

VEB is supported by a PPARC studentship. We thank Daniel Mortlock, Kate Isaak, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz and Dave Green for helpful discussions and we thank Ian Smail for a useful referee’s report. We thank J. Greiner for keeping his useful website up to date (http://www.aip.de/$``$jcg/grbgen.html) as well as all the observers and staff at the JCMT who carried out flexible-scheduled observations on our behalf.


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# Is There a Problem with Quantum Gravitation?

(July 2002)

## Abstract

We argue that Quantum Gravitation forces us to sum over metrics of all signatures.

Since the beginning of General Theory of Relativity the metric has played the dynamical role of the gravitational potential. This has led to an enormously successful classical theory of gravitation. All subsequent efforts at a quantum theory of gravitation have therefore been built around the idea that the graviton is a part of the space-time metric.

In this short note we draw the attention towards a usually neglected fact that a usual path integral quantization of the gravitational field perhaps forces us to sum over space-time metrics of all signatures. The signature of space-time metric is defined by the positive and negative eigenvalues of the diagonalized metric. The usual way of quantization makes us choose a “classical” background metric of a certain signature (usually Lorentzian or Euclidean as the case may be). We then consider the fluctuations given by all symmetric matrices of the same dimensionality as the dimensionality of the space-time under consideration. Actually we must divide the space of all symmetric matrices by the group of General Coordinate Transformations (GCT) as many of these matrices are related by GCT and do not describe metrics differing from each other. However the GCT do not change the signature of the metric. Therefore metrics with different signatures correspond to different points in the quotient space. It is actually the quotient space over which we have to perform the sum.

The problem becomes obvious if we consider the simplest case of a two-dimensional world. Let us consider the Euclidean case. In a certain coordinate system the background metric takes the form

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}a& 0\\ 0& b\end{array}\right)$$
(1)
where $`a`$ and $`b`$ are both positive. Let us consider only those quantum fluctuations of the gravitational field in which only the diagonal elements are involved. Such a fluctuation is again parametrized by a matrix

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}c& 0\\ 0& d\end{array}\right)$$
(2)
For arbitrary values of $`c`$ and $`d`$ it is clear that the signature of the sum of these two matrices is different from the original background metric. We may think that we may remedy the situation by demanding that the magnitude of the larger of $`c`$ and $`d`$ be smaller than the smaller of $`a`$ and $`b`$. However it is obviously unnatural. Also just constraining the diagonal elements of gravitational fluctuations does not solve the problem as the following example shows. Let us take the starting background metric to be

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right)$$
(3)
A fluctuation in the off-diagonal element puts this in a form

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& e\\ e& 1\end{array}\right)$$
(4)
When diagonalized by an orthogonal transformation, this becomes

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}1+e& 0\\ 0& 1e\end{array}\right)$$
(5)
Hence for $`e>1`$ the signature of this metric is Lorentzian.

The qualitative features remain the same in higher dimensions although the calculations involved are more complicated.

This situation is however not completely new. Gibbons, Hawking and Perry  in their discussion of unboundedness of Euclidean gravitational action came to the conclusion that in order to define the path integral properly one needs to integrate along a contour in the space of all metrics.

Hence from our discussion till now it is clear that if we are summing over all graviton fluctuations around some background we are actually summing over metrics of all signatures. If we constrain these fluctuations somehow so that the summation extends over only one signature of the metric, the usual expressions for the amplitudes may not be obtained (those which we obtain in the usual field theories from unrestricted summations).

Obviously there is the question of physical interpretation of these contributing space-time metrics of different signatures.These will naturally cause a violation of the Principle of Equivalence at the quantum level (some metrics not having the correct signature). It is at present under investigation. There may even be a connection between this problem and the problem of smallness of the observed cosmological constant.

These questions will hopefully be taken up in a future communication.

The author thanks Sunil Mukhi for illuminating discussions. He is also thankful to Palash B. Pal for making Ref.  available and suggesting a title (not the present one) for this note. I also thank Rajkumar Chakraborty for helping me with for typing this note.

This work was supported partly by a UGC grant for a minor project (sanction letter no. PSW-32 / 98-99 (ERO)),


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# An XMM-Newton observation of Ton S180: Constraints on the continuum emission in ultrasoft Seyfert galaxies

## 1 Introduction

Many Seyfert 1 galaxies and radio-quiet quasars possess X-ray spectra that steepen below $`2`$ keV. This ‘soft excess’ emission, usually defined as the excess emission over and above the hard X-ray power-law, was first seen in spectra obtained by HEAO-1 A2 (Pravdo et al. 1981), EXOSAT (Arnaud et al. 1985; Turner & Pounds 1989) and Einstein (Bechtold et al. 1987). Its physical origin remains uncertain, as does its connection with the so-called ‘big blue bump’ emission rising through the ultraviolet, although it is often associated with thermal emission from the putative accretion disc (e.g. Arnaud et al. 1985; Czerny & Elvis 1987).

Boller, Brandt & Fink (1996) and Laor et al. (1997) showed that the objects with the steepest soft X-ray spectra (implying the strongest soft excesses) tend to have relatively narrow optical H$`\beta `$ lines; many are classified optically as narrow-line Seyfert 1s (NLS1s; Osterbrock & Pogge 1985). These ‘ultrasoft’ Seyferts often show other notable properties such as very rapid X-ray variability (e.g. Forster & Halpern 1996; Boller et al. 1997; Turner et al. 1999; Leighly 1999a; Brandt et al. 1999) and strong optical Fe ii emission (e.g. Lawrence et al. 1997; Vaughan et al. 2001). The X-ray spectral form, X-ray variability and optical broad-line properties seem interconnected.

Here we report the results of a 30 ksec XMM-Newton observation of Tonantzintla S180 ($`z=0.062`$) obtained as part of a guaranteed time programme (PI: Th. Boller) to study the timing and spectral properties of ultrasoft NLS1s using XMM-Newton. Ton S180 is one of the X-ray brightest ultrasoft Seyferts (Vaughan et al. 1999; Leighly 1999a) and its luminosity is such that it is often classified as a quasar. Previous X-ray observations with ASCA (Turner, George & Nandra 1998; Vaughan et al. 1999; Leighly 1999b; Ballantyne, Iwasawa & Fabian 2001) and BeppoSAX (Comastri et al. 1998) showed a strong excess of soft emission and tentative evidence for an ionised iron line. The more recent high-resolution Chandra LETGS spectrum (Turner et al. 2001b) showed no strong, narrow absorption or emission features and showed the soft X-ray continuum is smooth and featureless.

The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In the following section the observation and basic data reduction procedures are outlined. Section 3 describes the X-ray spectral fitting results. This is followed by an analysis of the variability properties of Ton S180 in section 4. The implications of these results are discussed in section 5.

## 2 Observation and data reduction

XMM-Newton (Jansen et al. 2001) carries three European Photon Imaging Cameras (EPIC), specifically two MOS (Turner et al. 2001a) and one pn (Strüder et al. 2001) CCD camera. In addition there are two Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS; den Herder et al. 2001) and an Optical Monitor (OM; Mason et al. 2001).

XMM-Newton observed Ton S180 on 2000 December 14 (revolution 0186) for a duration of $``$30 ksec, during which all instruments were operating nominally. The MOS1 camera was in timing mode, which severely complicates the analysis, and these data are ignored in the present paper. Both the MOS2 and pn were operated in small window mode to reduce “pile up” from this relatively bright (few ct s-1) source, and all EPIC cameras used the medium filter. The RGS was operated in standard (Spectro+Q) mode. Extraction of science products from the Observation Data Files (ODFs) followed standard procedures using the XMM-Newton Science Analysis System v5.3 (sas).

The raw data were processed to produce calibrated event lists and screened to remove unwanted hot, dead or flickering pixels, and events due to electronic noise. Light curves extracted from these event lists showed the background to be stable throughout the duration of the observation. The total amount of “good” exposure time selected was $`28,644`$ s and $`20,338`$ s for MOS2 and pn, respectively, and $`30,232`$ s and $`29,321`$ s for RGS1 and RGS2. (The lower pn exposure is due to the lower “live time” of the pn camera in small-window mode, $``$71 per cent; Strüder et al. 2001).

Source data were extracted from circular regions of radius 35′′ from the MOS2 and pn, and show no signs of pile-up. Background events were extracted from off-source regions. Events corresponding to patterns 0–12 (single–quadruple pixel events) were extracted from MOS2 and patterns 0–4 (singles and doubles) were used for the pn analysis, after checking for consistency with the data extracted using only single pixel events (pattern 0). Standard redistribution matrices (m2\_r6\_all\_15.rmf for MOS2 and epn\_sw20\_sdY9.rmf for the pn) were used, and ancillary response files were generated using arfgen v1.48.8. First-order RGS spectra were extracted using the rgsproc v1.3.3 script, and appropriate response matrices were generated using rgsrmfgen v1.44.5. The total number of “good” source events extracted was $`2.9\times 10^5`$ for the pn, $`8.8\times 10^4`$ for MOS2 and $`1.4\times 10^4`$ for each RGS.

## 3 Spectral analysis

The source spectra were grouped such that each spectral bin contains at least 20 counts, and they were fitted using the xspec v11.1 software package (Arnaud 1996). The quoted errors on the derived best-fitting model parameters correspond to a 90 per cent confidence level for one interesting parameter (i.e., a $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=2.7`$ criterion) unless otherwise stated. Values of $`H_0=70`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0=0.5`$ are assumed throughout the paper, and fit parameters are quoted for the rest frame of the source.

### 3.1 The 2.5–10 keV spectral form

The two EPIC spectra were first examined separately to test for discrepancies. The data were fitted over 2.5–10 keV using a model comprised of a power-law modified by Galactic absorption (with fixed column density $`N_H=1.55\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2; Dickey & Lockman 1990). This provided a reasonable fit to both spectra ($`\chi ^2=115.0/153`$ degrees of freedom and $`\chi ^2=339.8/336dof`$ for the MOS2 and pn data, respectively) with consistent normalisations and photon indices ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.29\pm 0.10`$ for MOS2 and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.25\pm 0.06`$ for pn).

Given this good agreement between the two spectra over the 2.5–10 keV energy range, the data were fitted simultaneously in the rest of the spectral analysis, but in each fit the residuals from the two spectra were examined separately to check for inconsistencies. The relative normalisations were left free to allow for slight differences in absolute flux calibration between the two detectors. Figure 1 shows the two EPIC spectra compared to a simple power-law fitted over 2.5–10 keV. As expected from the fits to the individual spectra, this model ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.26_{0.12}^{+0.05}`$) is in excellent agreement with the data ($`\chi ^2=455.1/490dof`$).

#### 3.1.1 Iron K$`\alpha `$ emission

The pn spectrum shows positive residuals around $`7`$ keV which could indicate spectral features from iron K. To test for this an intrinsically narrow ($`\sigma =1`$ eV) Gaussian emission line was added to the model. With the narrow line energy fixed at 6.4 keV the fit was not significantly improved; the 90 per cent upper limit of the equivalent width of a narrow, neutral iron line is $`EW<60`$ eV. Allowing the line energy to be free provided an improvement to the fit ($`\chi ^2=447.3/488dof`$) but the best-fitting line energy of $`E=7.01\pm 0.06`$ keV is marginally too high for K$`\alpha `$ emission from even Hydrogen-like iron. The equivalent width of this line is $`EW=72\pm 43`$ eV. According to an $`F`$-test, upon adding two parameters (line flux and energy) the fit is significantly improved at 98.5 per cent confidence.. Allowing the line width to be free improved the fit further ($`\chi ^2=441.5/487dof`$) with a best-fitting width of $`\sigma =0.53_{0.33}^{+0.50}`$ keV and an energy of $`E=7.01\pm 0.31`$ keV, which is consistent with K$`\alpha `$ emission from H-like iron. An $`F`$-test suggests the fit is improved, at 98.8 per cent confidence, upon allowing the line width to be free. This broad line is strong, with an equivalent width of $`EW=282_{163}^{+245}`$ eV. The high energy derived from the line might instead be indicating the presence of iron K absorption (at $`E>7.1`$ keV), but this seems unlikely. Replacing the broad Gaussian with an absorption edge gave a worse fit ($`\chi ^2=451.8/488dof`$), with edge parameters $`E=8.33_{0.45}^{+0.65}`$ keV and $`\tau =0.15\pm 0.14`$.

Using a diskline line profile (Fabian et al. 1989) to model the residuals around $`7`$ keV provided a comparable fit to the broad Gaussian ($`\chi ^2=444.2/487`$). An $`F`$-test suggests this improvement to the fit, compared to the simple power-law model, is significant at $`99`$ per cent confidence. The best-fitting parameters of the line were the following: rest-frame energy $`E=6.48_{0.08}^{+0.42}`$ keV, $`EW=523_{160}^{+273}`$ eV and inclination angle $`i=65_9^{+21}`$ deg. Allowing the other free parameters (inner radius $`r_{in}`$, outer radius $`r_{out}`$, and disc emissivity index $`q`$) to be free did not improve the fit significantly, and thus these parameters were kept fixed at $`r_{in}=6r_g`$, $`r_{out}=1000r_g`$ and $`q=3`$. As can be seen from figure 1, the excess at $`7`$ keV in the pn data is not obvious in the MOS2 data; however, the two spectra are formally consistent with one another. When the normalisation of the diskline was allowed to be free between the two detectors, the best fitting normalisations were consistent, although the normalisation form the MOS2 spectrum is poorly constrained and is consistent with zero.

The above results are suggestive of “reflection” off a (possibly ionised) accretion disc. To provide a more physically realistic description of emission from an ionised disc, the model of Ross & Fabian (1993) (see also Ballantyne et al. 2001) was fitted to the data (assuming solar abundances). The disc reflection spectrum was blurred using the laor kernel (Laor 1991) to simulate Doppler and gravitational effects around a black hole. The best fitting ionised disc model gives a good fit ($`\chi ^2=445.0/487dof`$) with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.43\pm 0.13`$, $`R=1.5_{0.9}^{+1.1}`$ and fairly low ionisation ($`\mathrm{log}(\xi )<1.9`$). The laor profile parameters were only poorly constrained and were kept fixed (as above).

We conclude that the presence of a broad, ionised iron line (as previously suggested by Comastri et al. 1998 and Turner et al. 1998) is consistent with the XMM-Newton data, but the line parameters are only poorly constrained.

### 3.2 The broad-band X-ray spectrum

Having parameterised the spectrum above 2.5 keV the analysis was extended to cover the full useful spectral bandpass of XMM-Newton by including the EPIC data down to 0.3 keV and the RGS data. However, there are significant differences between the MOS2 and pn spectra below 1 keV; the difference is most pronounced around 0.56 keV. There is a similar feature present in the calibration observation of Mrk 421, which is almost certainly related to the instrumental O K-edge at 0.537 keV and seems to be most pronounced in data taken in pn small-window mode (as here). The residuals in the MOS camera are at a much lower level ($`<5`$ per cent) in this spectral region. For these reasons a conservative restriction was applied to the pn data, the spectrum was fitted between 1.2–10 keV only, while the MOS2 data were used over the 0.3–10 keV band.

An extrapolation of the simple 2.5–10 keV power-law model down to 0.3 keV (Figure 2) shows a smooth upturn in the EPIC spectrum: the soft excess. There does not seem to be an obvious transition from hard power-law to soft excess in the spectrum, on the contrary, the spectrum is gently curving up to at least 2 keV.

The average observed flux in the 0.3–10 keV band was $`2.2\times 10^{11}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 and the corresponding (unabsorbed) luminosity was $`2.5\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1. The bolometric luminosity is most likely $`>10^{45}`$ erg s-1 (this is a conservative estimate as Ton S180 probably harbours a strong EUV excess; Turner et al. 2002). Assuming Ton S180 is radiating at the Eddington limit (or lower) then it requires a black hole mass $`M>10^7\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (see also Turner et al. 2001b).

#### 3.2.1 RGS spectrum

The 0.35–1.5 keV RGS data confirm that the soft excess emission in Ton S180 is a smooth continuum, as seen by Turner et al. (2001b) from Chandra LETGS data. Figure 3 shows the background subtracted RGS spectrum of Ton S180 in flux units (RGS1 and RGS2 combined). An absorbed power-law provides a good fit to the data ($`\chi ^2=1315.2/1256dof`$) with the absorbing column fixed at the Galactic value and a power-law slope of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.77\pm 0.03`$. There are no significant sharp residuals in the RGS spectrum, the only obvious deviation from the power-law model is around 0.5–0.6 keV and is probably associated with the O K-edge in the detector response. The equivalent widths of any narrow absorption features are restricted to $`EW<1.0`$ eV (90 per cent upper limit) in the 0.35–0.70 keV energy range, $`EW<1.7`$ eV in the 0.7–1.0 keV range and $`EW<10`$ eV in the 1.0–1.5 keV range. Thus the soft excess in Ton S180 is a smooth continuum resembling a power-law. In the following sections the EPIC spectra are used to test various physical models for the soft excess emission.

#### 3.2.2 Phenomenological model

Given that the RGS spectrum can be fitted with a steep power law, the broad-band EPIC spectrum was first compared to a simple double power-law model, similar to that used by Comastri et al. (1998) in their analysis of a BeppoSAX observation of Ton S180. Fitting with a broken power-law model gave $`\chi ^2=919.1/898dof`$ with slopes $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1=2.98\pm 0.02`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2=2.22\pm 0.10`$ and a break energy $`E_{\mathrm{br}}=2.29\pm 0.04`$ keV. A slightly better fit was obtained using two separate power-laws ($`\chi ^2=910.9/898dof`$) with slopes $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1=3.11\pm 0.04`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2=1.49\pm 0.15`$ (see figure 2). In this model the softer of the two power-laws dominates the spectrum up to $`4`$ keV. The harder power-law is considerably flatter than in the broken power-law parameterisation, due to the addition of the steeper power-law over the whole band, and is perhaps unrealistically flat. These simple fits to the EPIC data, and the RGS results, show that the soft excess has the form of a steep power-law.

Figure 4 places the XMM-Newton spectrum in the context of the multiwavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) compiled by Turner et al. (2002). The multiwavelength data were taken approximately one year before the XMM-Newton observation, but it is clear that the X-ray spectral form did not change drastically between observations.

#### 3.2.3 Ionised reflection

The possible presence of iron K$`\alpha `$ emission (section 3.1.1) may indicate significant reflection off the surface of the accretion disc. The reflection spectrum can be strong below $`1`$ keV and could contribute significantly to the soft excess. To test whether the soft excess in Ton S180 could be produced by reprocessing of primary X-rays in the disc the reflection model discussed in section 3.1.1 was fitted to the 0.3–10 keV spectrum. The best fitting model obtained for the data above 2.5 keV gave a very poor fit to the broad-band data ($`\chi ^2=8351.1/897dof`$). The ionisation state of the reflector means it produces strong O vii recombination emission, not obvious in the data, while the total reflected flux below 2 keV falls far short of the observed soft excess.

Refitting this model to the full-band EPIC data still provided a rather poor fit to the data ($`\chi ^2=1030.4/896`$). The best fitting parameters were $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.58\pm 0.03`$, $`R=1.12_{0.12}^{+0.08}`$, $`\mathrm{log}(\xi )=3.71\pm 0.06`$ and parameters of the laor kernel were $`r_{\mathrm{in}}<2.5r_\mathrm{g}`$ and $`i=46\pm 8^{}`$ ($`r_{\mathrm{out}}`$ was kept fixed at $`400r_\mathrm{g}`$). In this model the disc surface is highly ionised and produces a smooth excess of emission in the soft band, partly from bremsstrahlung in the irradiated skin of the disc, with relatively weak spectral features. However, this model leaves significant residuals in the fit above 7 keV, where it predicts a strong, ionised iron edge. Thus the low-energy data seemed to require a highly ionised reflector, while the higher-energy spectrum suggested a reflector with much lower ionisation.

Allowing for two reflection components, with different ionisation parameters, improved the fit ($`\chi ^2=964.7/894dof`$). In this fit the continuum slope was $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.61\pm 0.02`$ incident on reflectors with ionisation parameters $`\mathrm{log}(\xi _1)=4.4\pm 0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{log}(\xi _2)=1.8\pm 0.1`$, the laor profile parameters were $`r_{\mathrm{in}}<1.9r_\mathrm{g}`$ and $`i=41\pm 6^{}`$. In this model the highly ionised reflector had relative strength $`R_10.5`$ while the colder reflector was much stronger, with $`R_22.4`$. Both reflection components contributed to the soft excess emission, but the strong colder reflector improved the fit to the hard X-ray data, although significant residuals still remained above 7 keV. The small inner radius of the laor kernel was required in order to smooth sufficiently the recombination features present in the reflection spectra.

#### 3.2.4 Purely thermal soft excess

A power-law plus single blackbody component, to model the soft excess, provided a poor fit to the data ($`\chi ^2=1123.6/898dof`$, see figure 2). Including a second blackbody component significantly improved the fit ($`\chi ^2=912.2/896dof`$), while a power-law plus three blackbodies provided an excellent fit ($`\chi ^2=887.8/894dof`$) with the following parameters: $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.24\pm 0.02`$, $`kT_1=33_9^{+27}`$ eV, $`kT_2=103\pm 5`$ eV, $`kT_3=248\pm 15`$ eV. This multiple blackbody parameterisation is similar to that used to characterise the broad-band X-ray spectra of other ultrasoft Seyferts, e.g., RE J1034+396 (Pounds, Done & Osborne, 1995), PKS 0558–504 (O’Brien et al. 2001) and 1H 0419–577 (Page et al. 2002).

However, while this multiple blackbody model did provide an adequate fit to the data, the temperatures and luminosities of these components are at odds with those expected for a simple accretion disc. A standard accretion disc around a $`10^7\mathrm{M}_{}`$ black hole should have a peak temperature $`<40`$ eV, much lower than the hottest temperature in the multiple blackbody model. The observed temperatures and luminosities predict sizes of the blackbody emitting regions of $`r_{\mathrm{BB}}3\times 10^{10}`$ cm for the hottest and $`r_{\mathrm{BB}}10^{13}`$ cm for the coolest, which are also difficult to reconcile with a simple accretion disc around a $`10^7\mathrm{M}_{}`$ black hole ($`r_\mathrm{g}1.5\times 10^{12}`$ cm).

Fitting the data with a more realistic thermal accretion disc spectrum, using the diskpn code (Gierliński et al. 1999), provided a poor fit to the data ($`\chi ^2=1073.7/898dof`$), because the model spectrum is not broad enough, and again it gave an unreasonably high temperature ($`kT=131\pm 5`$ eV). The strong, rapid variability of the soft excess (section 4) also seems incompatible with the expected timescales in a simple accretion disc (see also Boller et al. 1997). These results would seem to reject an origin for the soft excess in terms of (un-modified) thermal emission from an accretion disc. But, as discussed by e.g. Bechtold et al. (1987), Czerny & Elvis (1987) and Ross, Fabian & Mineshige (1992), inverse-Compton scattering in the upper layers of the disc atmosphere should significantly affect the observed high-energy tail of the disc emission. This possibility is discussed below.

#### 3.2.5 Thermal Comptonisation

Inverse-Compton scattering of soft photons in an optically thick medium (i.e., $`\tau >1`$; where the diffusion approximation is valid) produces an approximately power-law spectrum at low energies. Thus, as the soft excess in Ton S180 resembles a steep power-law, a Comptonised blackbody component should provide a reasonable fit. The energy index of the Comptonised spectrum is determined by the Compton $`y`$-parameter ($`y4\mathrm{\Theta }\tau ^2`$, where $`\mathrm{\Theta }=kT/m_\mathrm{e}c^2`$ is the dimensionless electron temperature) according to $`\alpha \sqrt{9/4+4/y}3/2`$ (e.g., section 7.7 of Rybicki & Lightman, 1979). This means that it is not possible to solve for both $`\tau `$ and $`kT`$ from knowledge of the spectral slope alone. Using the double power-law parameterisation of Ton S180 (section 3.2.2) gave a slope of $`\alpha =2.1`$ for the soft excess, which corresponds to $`y0.37`$ and it is possible to obtain this value, and hence the observed spectral slope, for a range of $`\tau `$ and $`kT`$ values. A similar situation occurs when considering the optically thin regime, in which case the spectral slope is determined by $`\alpha \mathrm{ln}\tau /\mathrm{ln}(1+4\mathrm{\Theta }+16\mathrm{\Theta }^2)`$. See Zdziarski (1985) and references therein for more details.

The CompTT code (Titarchuk 1994) was used to model Comptonisation of soft photons in a thermal plasma. A power-law plus Comptonisation component gave a good fit to the data ($`\chi ^2=903.7/896dof`$) with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.64\pm 0.18`$ and the soft excess modelled by Comptonisation of a thermal spectrum from a $`kT_{\mathrm{bb}}=60\pm 7`$ eV source. However, for the reasons mentioned above, the temperature and optical depth of the Comptonising plasma are strongly covariant parameters, and thus cannot be constrained simultaneously.

Fitting the spectrum with just two Comptonisation components, similar to the model used by O’Brien et al. (2001) and Page et al. (2002), gave a good fit ($`\chi ^2=891.9/895dof`$). The seed photon temperature was $`kT_{\mathrm{bb}}=56_{11}^{+6}`$ eV, but the parameters of the two plasmas were poorly constrained due to the degeneracy mentioned above. (Similar fits were obtained using the eqpair code, discussed below, to model two purely thermal plasmas.) It seems reasonable to associate the source of the soft seed photons with the thermal emission from the inner regions of an optically thick accretion disc. The existence of two discrete Comptonising plasmas is not so easy to explain, especially given that they varied almost identically on short timescales (section 4).

#### 3.2.6 Non-thermal Comptonisation

The double Comptonisation model described above has the two spectrally identified continua (soft and hard power-laws) originating in two distinct thermal Comptonising plasmas. An alternative is that the whole spectrum is produced by a single plasma with a hybrid thermal/non-thermal electron distribution (see Coppi 1999 for a discussion of the physics of such plasmas). Gierliński et al. (1999) modelled the spectrum of the Galactic Black Hole Candidate (GBHC) Cygnus X-1 in its high/soft state in terms of a hybrid plasma. In this model the Cyg X-1 spectrum is comprised of a blackbody from the accretion disc, plus a component due to inverse-Compton scattering of the disc photons in a corona containing both thermal and non-thermal electrons. The non-thermal tail to the electron distribution produces the steep power-law tail of the X-ray spectrum dominating above 10 keV (and observed up to at least $`800`$ keV) and the thermal electrons produce a “soft excess” at a few keV between the non-thermal tail and the accretion disc spectrum. The definite detection of a non-thermal Comptonisation component requires high-energy data, which are not available here, but, as first noted by Pounds et al. (1995), the X-ray spectra of ultrasoft Seyferts do resemble that of Cyg X-1 in its high/soft state. Thus it seems reasonable to test whether a hybrid thermal/non-thermal plasma is a viable model for the X-ray continuum of Ton S180.

The eqpair code (Coppi 1992; Gierliński et al. 1999) was used to compute the spectrum formed by Comptonisation of a blackbody photons in a plasma with an hybrid electron distribution. Non-thermal (relativistic) electrons are injected (by some unspecified process) as a power-law in Lorentz factor, $`\gamma `$, into a background thermal plasma, the rate of injection is given by: $`\dot{N}_{\mathrm{inj}}(\gamma )\gamma ^{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{inj}}}`$ (between $`\gamma _{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`\gamma _{\mathrm{max}}`$). The total optical depth (including that produced by e± pairs) and the equilibrium temperature of the thermal component (after accounting for Coulomb heating by non-thermal e± and Compton heating/cooling) are computed self-consistently once the initial parameters have been specified. For a detailed discussion of the processes accounted for by this code see Gierliński et al. (1999) and Coppi (1999). The important parameters of the model are the following: the temperature of the input thermal disc spectrum $`kT_{\mathrm{bb}}`$; the soft compactness $`l_\mathrm{s}=L_\mathrm{s}\sigma _\mathrm{T}/rm_\mathrm{e}c^3`$, which corresponds to the power supplied by soft seed photons ($`L_\mathrm{s}`$ is the total seed photon luminosity and $`r`$ is the radius of the emission region); the similarly defined thermal compactness $`l_{\mathrm{th}}`$, corresponding to the heating supplied to thermal electrons; the non-thermal compactness $`l_{\mathrm{nth}}`$, which gives the rate of injection of non-thermal electrons; the index of the non-thermal electron injection spectrum $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{inj}}`$; and the optical depth $`\tau _\mathrm{p}`$ of the background electron-proton plasma.

With so many parameters (some of which were covariant in the fit) the $`\chi ^2`$-space contained many local minima. In order to reduce the complexity of the fit some parameters were fixed at physically reasonable values (these are discussed further below). The details of the fitted model parameters will obviously depend on the chosen values for those parameters kept fixed. Thus, while the following fits demonstrate that the eqpair model can reproduce the shape of the XMM-Newton spectrum, the exact values of the fitted model parameters should be treated with some caution.

The total compactness $`l=l_\mathrm{s}+l_\mathrm{h}`$ (where $`l_\mathrm{h}=l_{\mathrm{th}}+l_{\mathrm{nth}}`$ is the total hard compactness) is not constrained by the XMM-Newton spectra. If the spectrum extends out to $`>500`$ keV a high compactness will lead to efficient pair production, but the strongest observable consequence of the presence of pairs is an annihilation line at 511 keV. In the absence of this information the soft compactness was therefore kept fixed at $`l_\mathrm{s}=30`$ (the lower limit obtained in section 4) and the ratios $`l_\mathrm{h}/l_\mathrm{s}`$ and $`l_{\mathrm{nth}}/l_\mathrm{h}`$ were used as free parameters in the fitting. Assuming the corona covers the inner disc, the former is related to the ratio of power dissipated in the corona compared to the disc, and the latter gives the fraction of power deposited in the corona that goes into the non-thermal component. The radius of the emitting region was kept fixed at $`r=10^{14}`$ cm, this is $`<70r_\mathrm{g}`$ for a $`>10^7\mathrm{M}_{}`$ black hole, and at the above assumed value of $`l_\mathrm{s}`$ this gives a reasonable soft X-ray luminosity. The temperature of the seed blackbody was fixed at $`kT_{\mathrm{bb}}=50`$ eV and the minimum and maximum Lorentz factors for the non-thermal injection spectrum were $`\gamma _{\mathrm{min}}=1.3`$ and $`\gamma _{\mathrm{max}}=1000`$ (the resulting model spectrum is largely insensitive to the chosen value of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{max}}`$ when $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{inj}}>2`$).

The eqpair model gave a good fit ($`\chi ^2=892.9/897dof`$) with the following parameters: $`l_\mathrm{h}/l_\mathrm{s}=0.74\pm 0.03`$, $`l_{\mathrm{nth}}/l_\mathrm{h}=0.78\pm 0.02`$, $`\tau _\mathrm{p}=7.0_{1.8}^{+0.8}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{inj}}=2.84_{0.15}^{+0.26}`$. Thus there is marginally more power supplied by the seed photons than the coronal electrons, and most of the electron heating is in the form of non-thermal electrons which are injected with a steep spectrum. The soft excess is produced by Compton scattering of the accretion disc spectrum by thermalised electrons, and the emission above a few keV is produced by the non-thermal component. These results are similar to those obtained by Gierliński et al. (1999) for the high/soft state spectrum of Cyg X-1; the significant difference is that in this case the optical depth of the background plasma is much higher than in Cyg X-1. If the optical depth is kept fixed at $`\tau _\mathrm{p}=1`$ a slightly poorer (but still acceptable) fit is obtained ($`\chi ^2=910.0/898dof`$). Again the soft excess is produced by Compton scattering of seed photons by thermal electrons, and the harder X-ray emission is produced by the non-thermal electrons.

## 4 Timing analysis

This section describes timing analyses of the EPIC data. Results are presented only for the pn data, which have the highest signal-to-noise, but the results were checked against the MOS2 data and the two were found to be entirely consistent. The ($`1\sigma `$) errors on the light curves were calculated using counting statistics.

The topmost panel of figure 5 shows the broad-band (0.2–10 keV) EPIC pn light curve of Ton S180 in 200 s time bins. The light curve is perfectly evenly sampled, uninterrupted and shows a peak-to-peak variation of $`50`$ per cent over the course of the observation. The fastest continuous rise in the light curve occurred at around $`2.4\times 10^4`$s, where the flux increased by $`30`$ per cent in 2000 s, corresponding to an increase in luminosity of $`\mathrm{\Delta }L/\mathrm{\Delta }t3.8\times 10^{40}`$ erg s-2 in the 0.3–10 keV band. This was used to estimate the radiative efficiency $`\eta `$ of the source, assuming photon diffusion through a spherical mass of accreting matter, following Fabian (1979): $`\mathrm{\Delta }L/\mathrm{\Delta }t<\eta 2.1\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-2. (But see also Brandt et al. 1999, for a discussion of the assumptions used in this calculation.) This gave a limit of $`\eta >1.8`$ per cent. The rapid variability was also used to place a limit on the compactness parameter, following Done & Fabian (1989). Assuming that $`r=c\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ gives $`\mathrm{\Delta }L/\mathrm{\Delta }t<l10^{39}`$ erg s-2. For Ton S180 this gave $`l>34`$.

Figure 5 also shows the pn light curves extracted from five different energy bands in 500 s bins. The light curves all show similar trends, albeit with relatively poor signal-to-noise in the harder bands. The hardness ratios of these light curves were examined as a first test of spectral variability. The ten hardness ratios (six of which are shown in figure 6) from the five light curves were each compared to a constant using a $`\chi ^2`$ test. Four of the ten hardness ratios examined were inconsistent with a constant hypothesis at $`>99`$ per cent confidence. These ratios, namely $`(0.40.8)/(0.20.4)`$, $`(0.81.5)/(0.20.4)`$, $`(1.53)/(0.20.4)`$ and $`(1.53)/(0.40.8)`$, are also among the highest signal-to-noise ratios. Using the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient and the Kendall $`\tau `$–statistic (see e.g., Press et al. 1992) to test for correlations, none of the hardness ratios was correlated with the broad-band count rate at greater than 90 per cent confidence.

Figure 7 shows a comparison of pn spectra extracted from intervals of high and low flux. These were extracted from only those intervals when the source count rate was above 10 ct s-1 (high) or below 8.8 ct s-1 (low). The high and low flux spectra contained $`9.6\times 10^4`$ ct and $`8.0\times 10^4`$ ct, respectively. The ratio of high to low flux spectra is consistent with a constant ($`\chi ^2=81.6/84dof`$), again indicating a lack of flux-correlated spectral variability.

The normalised RMS spectrum was calculated in order to quantify the degree of variability in the different energy bands, again using the 500 s binned light curves. The fractional variability amplitude was measured using the $`F_{\mathrm{var}}`$ statistic (Edelson et al. 2002) which is equal to the square root of the normalised excess variance $`\sigma _{\mathrm{XS}}^2`$ (Nandra et al. 1997). The errors were estimated using the formula in Edelson et al. (2002) and should be considered as conservative estimates on the true uncertainties. Figure 8 shows the fractional variability amplitude calculated in ten energy bands, which changes by only 3 per cent over the XMM-Newton band-pass. This remarkably flat RMS spectrum contrasts with the situation in many ‘normal’ spectrum Seyfert 1s, which tend to show larger fractional variations at lower energies (e.g. Nandra et al. 1997). Altering the sizes of the time bins or the energy ranges used in the light curves made little difference to the RMS spectrum since most of the variability power is on timescales $`>500`$ s.

Having established that the light curves show similar trends and almost identical amplitudes, the temporal cross-correlation functions (CCFs) were calculated in order to search for leads or lags between different energy bands. The Discrete Correlation Function (DCF) of Edelson & Krolik (1988) was used as an estimator of the CCF. The other nine energy bands used in the RMS spectrum were compared to the softest band (0.2–0.3 keV). Of the nine CCFs examined eight peaked at zero-lag (e.g., see figure 9) and the one exception ($`0.20.3`$ keV against $`1.52.0`$ keV) peaked at a lag of only one time bin (500 s, with the harder band lagging the softer band) which we do not consider to be significant. In all cases the CCF was reasonably symmetric. These results indicate there is no evidence for a lag or lead between the various energy bands to a limit of $`\pm 500`$ s.

## 5 Discussion

This paper presents an uninterrupted $`30`$ ksec XMM-Newton observation of the ultrasoft, narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy Ton S180. The spectrum above 2.5 keV is slightly steeper than the norm for Seyfert 1 galaxies ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }2.26`$ compared to $`1.9`$) but the iron K$`\alpha `$ line emission is only poorly constrained. At lower energies the spectrum steepens, seen as a soft excess over the hard X-ray power-law with a featureless, approximately power-law form. The shape of the soft excess is similar to that observed in other objects. For example, Marshall et al. (2002) found the high-resolution soft X-ray spectrum of the ultrasoft Seyfert 1 Mrk 478 (which has a similar X-ray luminosity to Ton S180) was a featureless power-law. PKS 0558–504 also showed a similar soft excess shape (O’Brien et al. 2001). The Chandra HETGS observation of the variable, narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4051 again showed the soft excess to be a rapidly variable continuum component. However, in this lower-luminosity source it showed significant spectral curvature (Collinge et al. 2001).

The observed flux of Ton S180 showed rapid variability, changing by $`50`$ per cent during the observation, but showed only weak spectral variability. This implies that, to first order at least, the curved X-ray spectrum is varying as one component. There are indications that this may be a general result, that Seyferts with steep X-ray spectra show very little spectral variability (at least on short timescales). The ASCA monitoring of Ark 564 and Ton S180 showed flat RMS spectra (Turner et al. 2001c; Romano et al. 2001; Edelson et al. 2002), as did the recent XMM-Newton observation of 1H 0707–495 (Boller et al. 2002). This lack of short timescale spectral variability is somewhat different from the case in “normal” Seyfert 1s, which tend to show stronger variability at lower energies (e.g., Nandra et al. 1997; Markowitz & Edelson, 2001; Vaughan & Edelson, 2001).

The lack of strong spectral features means that the observed form of the soft excess is consistent with a range of models. The data clearly rule out models based on blends of narrow soft X-ray lines (e.g., Turner et al. 1991), but leave a variety of continuum emission mechanisms as plausible alternatives. Reprocessing of primary X-rays by an ionised accretion disc can produce a strong, smooth excess similar to that observed but has difficulty simultaneously explaining the hard X-ray spectrum (section 3.2.3). The observed lack of spectral variability is also a challenge for this model. The highly correlated, simultaneous variability between 3–10 keV flux (dominated by the primary X-rays) and softer X-ray bands (dominated by the reprocessed emission) requires the reprocessing to produce a near-perfect “reverberation” signature with a delay of $`\mathrm{\Delta }t<500`$ s (section 4). Assuming a black hole mass of $`>10^7\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (from the Eddington limit) this places the reprocessor within $`<10r_\mathrm{g}`$ of the hard X-ray source.

As first pointed out by Bechtold et al. (1987) the soft excess is too hot to be “bare” thermal emission from the accretion disc. The spectral form is consistent with emission from multiple blackbody components, but the derived temperatures and sizes are inconsistent with those predicted for an accretion disc (unless Ton S180 is highly super-Eddington). Allowing for Doppler and gravitational shifts does not significantly alter this result.

Inverse-Compton scattering of soft photons by thermal electrons provides a more physically satisfying explanation for the broad soft excess (sections 3.2.5 and 3.2.6), in which case the seed photon source is consistent with thermal accretion disc emission. The harder power-law emission extending to 10 keV (and presumably beyond) can also be produced by Comptonisation, either in another purely thermal plasma or by non-thermal electrons in a plasma with a hybrid thermal/non-thermal distribution. Whether this is dominated by thermal or non-thermal electrons is impossible to tell without higher energy data; fits using thermal and hybrid thermal/non-thermal models are comparable in the XMM-Newton band, where the predicted spectra both resemble power-laws.

A problem with the models discussed above is that they have difficulty explaining the rapid and energy-independent variability of Ton S180 (section 4). These constraints force the hard and soft X-ray producing regions to be in very close causal contact with one another. If at high accretion rates the disc is puffed-up due to radiation pressure, then it is possible that the separation between the hot corona and the optically thick accretion disc can be negligibly small. In this scenario, some fraction of the accretion energy is dissipated in the surface layers of the disc, producing hot electrons which can Comptonise the soft photons from below. The accretion disc model of Hubeny et al. (2001) demonstrates the formation of a hot upper layer to the accretion disc due to dissipation near the surface (see their figure 10), and simulations of magnetized accretion discs by Miller & Stone (2000) suggest that even higher temperatures may be reached, leading to the formation of a true corona. Simulations of emergent disc spectra accounting for dissipation in the upper atmosphere will be presented elsewhere (Ross et al. in prep.), but early indications suggest that the observed strong, smooth soft excess can be reproduced.

We also note the lack of a significant narrow, neutral iron emission line at 6.4 keV. The formal (90 per cent) upper limit on the equivalent with of such a line is $`60`$ eV, similar to that obtained for 1H 0707–495 by Boller et al. (2002). Again this contrasts with the situation in more normal Seyfert 1s, which tend to show a narrow 6.4 keV emission line from distant, cold material (e.g., Yaqoob, George & Turner, 2002). However, whether this is due to a systematic difference between ultrasoft and normal Seyfert 1s remains to be seen.

## Acknowledgements

Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA). We would like to thank the SOC and SSC teams for making possible the observations and data analysis. We thank Gareth Griffiths for useful discussions about the EPIC calibration and Marek Gierliński for help with the eqpair code. We thank the referee, Kim Page, for useful comments. SV acknowledges support from PPARC. DRB acknowledges financial support from the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. WNB acknowledges financial support from NASA LTSA grant NAG5-8107 and NASA grant NAG5-9939.