Related papers: Ionized Iron Lines in X-ray Reflection Spectra
Accreting black holes show characteristic 'reflection' features in their X-ray spectra, including the iron K$\alpha$ fluorescence line, which result from X-rays radiated by a compact central corona being reprocessed in the accretion disc…
The Fe K_\alpha fluorescent line at 6.4 keV is a powerful probe of the space-time metric in the vicinity of accreting compact objects. We investigated here how some alternative theories of gravity, namely Scalar tensor Theories, that invoke…
We present an analysis of XMM-Newton observations of eleven Seyfert galaxies that appear to be missing a broad iron K alpha line. These objects represent a challenge to the established paradigm for active galactic nuclei, where a relatively…
We present results from fitting ionized accretion disc models to three long ASCA observations of the Seyfert 1 galaxy MCG--6-30-15. All three datasets can be fit by a model consisting of ionized reflection from the inner region of the…
X-ray illumination of accretion disks is an invaluable diagnostic of the structure of these disks because of the associated iron K$\alpha$ emission. Here we point out that the resulting reflected spectra depend very sensitively on the…
IRAS 18325-5926 is an X-ray bright, Compton-thin, type-2 Seyfert galaxy and it was the first Seyfert 2 in which the presence of a broad Fe K-alpha emission line was claimed. However, although the structure of the Fe line appears broad,…
The fluorescent iron K$\alpha$ emission line profile provides an excellent probe of the innermost regions of active galactic nuclei. Fe XXV and Fe XXVI in diffuse plasma above the accretion disc can affect the X-ray spectrum by iron…
One of the most useful spectral diagnostics of accreting black hole systems is the Fe K$\alpha$ fluorescence line. Detected in many systems, it is often used to estimate the black hole spin, as its breadth is attributed to relativistic…
In most accreting black-hole systems the copious X-rays commonly observed from the inner-most regions are accompanied by a reflection spectrum. The latter is the signature of energetic photons reprocessed by the optically thick material of…
The broad X-ray iron line, detected in many active galactic nuclei, is likely to be produced by fluorescence from the X-ray illuminated central parts of an accretion disc close to a supermassive black hole. The time-averaged shape of the…
We study the X-ray illumination of an accretion disk. We relax the simplifying assumption of constant gas density used in most previous studies; instead we determine the density from hydrostatic balance. It is found that the thermal…
We present 6.4 keV iron K-alpha fluorescent line profiles predicted for a relativistic black hole accretion disk in the presence of a spiral motion in Kerr geometry, the work extended from an earlier literature motivated by recent…
X-rays are emitted from the corona above the orbiting matter of the accretion disk and travel either directly to us or illuminate the disk. This illumination of the inner disk is enhanced by gravitational light bending, which focuses the…
One of the principal scientific objectives of the upcoming Constellation-X mission is to attempt to map the inner regions of accretion disks around black holes in Seyfert galaxies by reverberation mapping of the Fe K fluorescence line. This…
We report evidence for an Fe K-alpha fluorescence line feature and disk reflection in the Very High, High, and Low State X-ray spectra of the galactic microquasar XTE J1748-288 during its June~1998 outburst. Spectral analyses are made on…
X-ray ionized reflection occurs when a surface is irradiated with X-rays so intense that its ionization state is determined by the ionization parameter xi propto F/n, where F is the incident flux and n the gas density. It occurs in…
Reflection of X-rays from cool material around a black hole is one of the few observational diagnostics of the accretion flow geometry. Models of this reflected spectrum generally assume that the accretion disk can be characterized by…
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,…
After reviewing the basic physics of X-ray reflection in AGN, we present three case studies which illustrate the current state of X-ray reflection studies. For the low-luminosity AGN NGC4258, we find that the iron line is much narrower than…
Numerical simulations of the interiors of radiation dominated accretion disks show that significant density inhomogeneities can be generated in the gas. Here, we present the first results of our study on X-ray reflection spectra from such…