English

Testing models of X-ray reflection from irradiated disks

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

We model the reflected spectrum expected from localized magnetic flares above an ionised accretion disk. We concentrate on the case of very luminous magnetic flares above a standard accretion disk extending down to the last stable orbit, and use a simple parameterisation to allow for an X-ray driven wind. Full disk spectra including relativistic smearing are calculated. When fit with the constant density reflection models, these spectra give both a low reflected fraction and a small line width as seen in the hard spectra from Galactic Black Hole Binaries and Active Galactic Nuclei. We fit our calculated spectra to real data from the low/hard state of Nova Muscae and Cyg X-1 and show that these models give comparable χ2\chi^2 to those obtained from the constant density reflection models which implied a truncated disk. This explicitally demonstrates that the data are consistent with either magnetic flares above an ionized disk extending down to the last stable orbit around a black hole, or with non-ionized, truncated disks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0108351,
  title  = {Testing models of X-ray reflection from irradiated disks},
  author = {C. Done and S. Nayakshin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0108351},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

8 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-07-22T08:01:49.570Z