X-ray spectroscopy in the microcalorimeter era 4: Optical depth effects on the soft X-rays studied with CLOUDY
Abstract
In this paper, we discuss atomic processes modifying the soft X-ray spectra in from optical depth effects like photoelectric absorption and electron scattering suppressing the soft X-ray lines. We also show the enhancement in soft X-ray line intensities in a photoionized environment via continuum pumping. We quantify the suppression/enhancement by introducing a "line modification factor ()." If 0 1, the line is suppressed, which could be the case in both collisionally-ionized and photoionized systems. If 1, the line is enhanced, which occurs in photoionized systems. Hybrid astrophysical sources are also very common, where the environment is partly photoionized and partly collisionally-ionized. Such a system is V1223 Sgr, an intermediate polar binary. We show the application of our theory by fitting the first-order Chandra MEG spectrum of V1223 Sgr with a combination of \textsc{Cloudy}-simulated additive cooling-flow and photoionized models. In particular, we account for the excess flux for O~VII, O~VIII, Ne~IX, Ne~X, and Mg~XI lines in the spectrum found in a recent study, which could not be explained with an absorbed cooling-flow model.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2207.02267,
title = {X-ray spectroscopy in the microcalorimeter era 4: Optical depth effects on the soft X-rays studied with CLOUDY},
author = {Priyanka Chakraborty and Gary Ferland and Marios Chatzikos and Andrew Fabian and Stefano Bianchi and Francisco Guzmán and Yuanyuan Su},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.02267},
year = {2022}
}