XMM-Newton spectra of hard spectrum Rosat AGN: X-ray absorption and optical reddening

We present the XMM-Newton spectra of three low-redshift intermediate Seyferts (one Sy 1.5, and two Sy 1.8), from our survey of hard spectrum Rosat sources. The three AGN are well fitted by absorbed powerlaws, with intrinsic nuclear photoelectric absorption from column densities between 1.3 and 4.0 × 10²¹ cm^-2. In the brightest object the X-ray spectrum is good enough to show that the absorber is not significantly ionized. For all three objects the powerlaw slopes appear to be somewhat flatter (Γ∼1.3-1.6) than those found in typical unabsorbed Seyferts. The constraints from optical and X-ray emission lines imply that all three objects are Compton-thin. For the two fainter objects, the reddening deduced from the optical broad emission lines in one of them, and the optical continuum in the other, are similar to those expected from the X-ray absorption, if we assume a Galactic gas-to-dust ratio and reddening curve. The broad line region Balmer decrement of our brightest object is larger than expected from its X-ray absorption, which can be explained either by an intrinsic Balmer decrement with standard gas-to-dust ratio, or by a >Galactic gas-to-dust ratio. These Galactic ratios of extinction to photoelectric absorption cannot extend to the high redshift, high luminosity, broad line AGN in our sample, because they have column densities >10²² cm^-2, and so their broad line regions would be totally obscured. This means that some effect (e.g., luminosity dependence, or evolution) needs to be present in order to explain the whole population of absorbed AGN.