English

Modeling Multiple X-Ray Reflection in Super-Eddington Winds

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2024-12-13 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

It has been recently discovered that a few super-Eddington sources undergoing black hole super-Eddington accretion exhibit X-ray reflection signatures. In such new systems, one expects that the coronal X-ray emissions are mainly reflected by optically thick super-Eddington winds instead of thin disks. In this paper, we conduct a series of general relativistic ray-tracing and Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulations to model the X-ray reflection signatures, especially the characteristic Fe Kα\alpha line, produced from super-Eddington accretion flows around non-spinning black holes. In particular, we allow the photons emitted by a lamppost corona to be reflected multiple times in a cone-like funnel surrounded by fast winds. We find that the Fe Kα\alpha line profile most sensitively depends on the wind kinematics, while its exact shape also depends on the funnel open angle and corona height. Furthermore, very interestingly, we find that the Fe Kα\alpha line can have a prominent double-peak profile in certain parameter spaces even with a face-on orientation. Moreover, we compare the Fe Kα\alpha line profiles produced from super-Eddington and thin disks and show that such lines can provide important insights into the understanding of black hole systems undergoing super-Eddington accretion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.08596,
  title  = {Modeling Multiple X-Ray Reflection in Super-Eddington Winds},
  author = {Zijian Zhang and Lars Lund Thomsen and Lixin Dai and Christopher S. Reynolds and Javier A. García and Erin Kara and Riley Connors and Megan Masterson and Yuhan Yao and Thomas Dauser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.08596},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

24 pages, published in ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:37:32.167Z