English

X-ray reflected spectra from accretion disk models.II. Diagnostic tools for X-ray observations

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-05-20 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We present a comprehensive study of the emission spectra from accreting sources. We use our new reflection code to compute the reflected spectra from an accretion disk illuminated by X-rays. This set of models covers different values of ionization parameter, solar iron abundance and photon index for the illuminating spectrum. These models also include the most complete and recent atomic data for the inner-shell of the iron and oxygen isonuclear sequences. We concentrate our analysis to the 2-10 keV energy region, and in particular to the iron K-shell emission lines. We show the dependency of the equivalent width (EW) of the Fe Kα\alpha with the ionization parameter. The maximum value of the EW is 800\sim 800 eV for models with log ξ1.5\xi\sim 1.5, and decreases monotonically as ξ\xi increases. For lower values of ξ\xi the Fe Kα\alpha EW decreases to a minimum near log ξ0.8\xi\sim 0.8. We produce simulated CCD observations based on our reflection models. For low ionized, reflection dominated cases, the 2-10 keV energy region shows a very broad, curving continuum that cannot be represented by a simple power-law. We show that in addition to the Fe K-shell emission, there are other prominent features such as the Si and S Lα\alpha lines, a blend of Ar {\sc viii-xi} lines, and the Ca {\sc x} Kα\alpha line. In some cases the S {\sc xv} blends with the He-like Si RRC producing a broad feature that cannot be reproduced by a simple Gaussian profile. This could be used as a signature of reflection.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1101.1115,
  title  = {X-ray reflected spectra from accretion disk models.II. Diagnostic tools for X-ray observations},
  author = {J. Garcia and T. R. Kallman and R. F. Mushotzky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.1115},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

34 pages, 10 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:08:09.605Z