English

On the Structure of the Iron K-Edge

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v2

Abstract

It is shown that the commonly held view of a sharp Fe K edge must be modified if the decay pathways of the series of resonances converging to the K thresholds are adequately taken into account. These resonances display damped Lorentzian profiles of nearly constant widths that are smeared to impose continuity across the threshold. By modeling the effects of K damping on opacities, it is found that the broadening of the K edge grows with the ionization level of the plasma and that the appearance at high ionization of a localized absorption feature at 7.2 keV is identified as the K-beta unresolved transition array.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0207324,
  title  = {On the Structure of the Iron K-Edge},
  author = {P. Palmeri and C. Mendoza and T. R. Kallman and M. A. Bautista},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0207324},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages, 3 figures, ApJ 577, L119, 2002