Multi-zone warm and cold clumpy absorbers in three Seyfert galaxies

Aims. We present the first detailed X-ray analysis of three active galactic nuclei, the Seyfert 1 galaxies UGC 3142 and ESO 140-43, and the Seyfert 2 galaxy ESO 383-18, to study the geometry and the physical characteristics of their absorbers. Methods. High-quality XMM-Newton EPIC and RGS data were analyzed as well as Swift/XRT and BAT and INTEGRAL IBIS/ISGRI data to cover the 0.3-110 keV energy range. For ESO 140-43 also XMM-Newton/OM and Swift/UVOT data were used. We studied the variability of the three AGN on a time-scale of seconds using the EPIC/PN light curves, and the long-term time-scale variability of ESO 140-43 using two observations performed six months apart by XMM-Newton. Results. The spectra of the three Seyfert galaxies present a soft excess at energies E < 2 keV above a power law continuum that can be modeled by complex absorption, without any additional emission component. The X-ray sources in UGC 3142 and ESO 383-18 are absorbed by two layers of neutral material, with covering fractions f(1) similar or equal to 0.92 and f(2) similar or equal to 0.57 for UGC 3142, and f(1) similar or equal to 0.97 and f(2) similar or equal to 0.86 for ESO 383-18. While the clumpy absorber could be part of a disk wind or of the broad line region for UGC 3142, for ESO 383-18 a clumpy torus plus Compton thin dust lanes are more likely. The spectra of ESO 140-43 can be well fitted with a power law absorbed by three clumpy ionized absorbers with different covering factors, column densities, and ionization parameters, likely part of a moving clumpy system, which could be a disk wind or the broad line region. The strong spectral and flux variability on a time-scale of six months seen in ESO 140-43 is likely due to changes in the moving absorbers. We were able to detect the variation of the covering factor of one of the three ionized absorbers on a kilo-seconds time-scale in the EPIC light-curve of ESO 140-43.