English

Prospects for differentiating extended coronal geometries in AGNs with the IXPE mission

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2022-01-05 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

X-ray polarimetry can potentially constrain the unknown geometrical shape of AGN coronae. We present simulations of the X-ray polarization signal expected from AGN coronae, assuming three different geometries, namely slab, spherical and conical. We use the fully relativistic Monte-Carlo Comptonization code monk to compute the X-ray polarization degree and angle. We explore different coronal parameters such as shape, size, location and optical depth. Different coronal geometries give a significantly different X-ray polarization signal. A slab corona yields a high polarization degree, up to 14% depending on the viewing inclination; a spherical corona yields low values, about 1-3%, while a conical corona yields intermediate values. We also find a difference of 90 degrees in polarization angle between the slab corona and the spherical or conical coronae. Upcoming X-ray polarimetry missions like IXPE will allow us to observationally distinguish among different coronal geometries in AGNs for the first time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.11268,
  title  = {Prospects for differentiating extended coronal geometries in AGNs with the IXPE mission},
  author = {F. Ursini and G. Matt and S. Bianchi and A. Marinucci and M. Dovčiak and W. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.11268},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 14 pages, 11 figures