Irradiation of an accretion disc by a jet: general properties and implications for spin measurements of black holes

By T. Dauser, Javier Garcia, J. Wilms, M. Bock, L. Brenneman, M. Falanga, K. Fukumura, C. Reynolds. 2013

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X-ray irradiation of the accretion disc leads to strong reflection features, which are then broadened and distorted by relativistic effects. We present a detailed, general relativistic approach to model this irradiation for different geometries of the primary X-ray source. These geometries include the standard point source on the rotational axis as well as more jet-like sources, which are radially elongated and accelerating. Incorporating this code in the RELLINE model for relativistic line emission, the line shape for any configuration can be predicted. We study how different irradiation geometries affect the determination of the spin of the black hole. Broad emission lines are produced only for compact irradiating sources situated close to the black hole. This is the only case where the black hole spin can be unambiguously determined. In all other cases the line shape is narrower, which could either be explained by a low spin or an elongated source. We conclude that for those cases and independent of the quality of the data, no unique solution for the spin exists and therefore only a lower limit of the spin value can be given

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3b1ca1718485f032c1c20d7788578edb01d94237

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Citations in the corpus

X-RAY REFLECTED SPECTRA FROM ACCRETION DISK MODELS. III. A COMPLETE GRID OF IONIZED REFLECTION CALCULATIONS (2013, methodology): “The power-law continuum is believed to originate through the Compton up-scattering of the thermal photons by the electrons in a hot corona or a jet (Haardt 1993; Dove et al. 1997; Dauser et al. 2013).”
Testing the Kerr Black Hole Hypothesis Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy (2016, methodology): “It is an extension of the RELXILL package (Dauser et al. 2013; García et al. 2013, 2014) to non-Kerr spacetimes.”
IMPROVED REFLECTION MODELS OF BLACK HOLE ACCRETION DISKS: TREATING THE ANGULAR DISTRIBUTION OF X-RAYS (2013, methodology): “As discussed in García & Kallman (2010) and Dauser et al. (2013), the incidence angle affects the specific intensity at the illuminated boundary of the slab, which influences to certain degree its ionization structure.”
Testing black hole candidates with electromagnetic radiation (2015, background): “However, in a correct relativistic lamppost geometry one should expect a much steeper emissivity function at smaller radii and for a source close to the compact object, as a result of strong light bending (Dauser et al., 2013).”
The role of the reflection fraction in constraining black hole spin (2014, methodology): “However, only compact sources that are close to the black hole will lead to a strong broadening of theFe Kα lines (Dauser et al. 2013; Fabian et al. 2014), which is essential for reliable spin estimates (e.g., 1H0707−495 or NGC 1365).”
The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes (2014, background): “Thus with a simple relativistic smearing model (usually just a library of rays traced from close to the black hole to infinity; see [247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252]) the spin can be measured in sensitive X-ray spectra (see, e.”