Related papers: Reflection at large distance from the central engi…
We find a very strong correlation between the intrinsic spectral slope in X-rays and the amount of Compton reflection from a cold medium in Seyfert AGNs and in hard state of X-ray binaries with either black holes or weakly-magnetized…
The X-ray source 4U 1822-371 is an eclipsing low-mass X-ray binary and X-ray pulsar, hosting a NS that shows periodic pulsations in the X-ray band. The inclination angle of the system is so high that in principle, it should be hard to…
There is now growing evidence that the soft X-ray excess is almost ubiquitous among unobscured active galaxies. In spite of the various interpretations that have been considered in the last years, the nature of this foremost spectral…
We have studied the average 3-200 keV spectra of Seyfert galaxies of type 1 and 2, using data obtained with BeppoSAX. The average Seyfert 1 spectrum is well-fitted by a power law continuum with photon spectral index Gamma~1.9, a Compton…
A model for the inner regions of accretion flows is presented where, due to disc instabilities, cold and dense material is clumped into deep sheets or rings. Surrounding these density enhancements is hot, tenuous gas where coronal…
IC 4329A is the brightest known Seyfert galaxy in hard (~2-30 keV) X-rays and is likely to be representative of Seyfert 1 galaxies as a class. A recent 100 ks BeppoSAX observation (Perola et al. 1999) clearly confirmed the presence of a…
We review observations and theoretical models of X-ray/gamma-ray spectra of radio-quiet Seyfert galaxies and of Galactic black-hole candidates (in the hard spectral state). The observed spectra share all their basic components: an…
The scattering of light dark matter off thermal electrons inside the Sun produces a "fast" sub-component of the dark matter flux that may be detectable in underground experiments. We update and extend previous work by analyzing the…
The spectrum of the bright Seyfert I galaxy MCG-6-30-15 shows a broad Fe K-alpha emission line, generally interpreted to originate very close to the central black hole which must then have a high spin. The observed X-ray variability is…
The hard X-ray emission of active galactic nuclei (AGN), and in particular, the reflection component, is shaped by the innermost and outer regions of the galactic nucleus. Our main goal is to investigate the variation of the Compton hump…
Accretion onto magnetic neutron stars results in X-ray spectra that often exhibit a cyclotron resonance scattering feature (CRSF) and, sometimes, higher harmonics of it. Two places are suspect for the formation of a CRSF: the surface of the…
A novel scheme is proposed to generate uniform relativistic electron layers for coherent Thomson backscattering. A few-cycle laser pulse is used to produce the electron layer from an ultra-thin solid foil. The key element of the new scheme…
Selected topics dealing with X-ray/soft gamma-ray emission from accreting black-hole sources are reviewed. The shape of soft gamma-ray spectra of Seyferts observed by OSSE can be well modelled by thermal Comptonization. A very strong…
It is shown that the energy dependence of the time lags in Cygnus X-1 excludes any significant contribution of the standard reflected component to the observed lags. The conclusion is valid in the 0.1--10 Hz frequency range where time lags…
We analyzed RXTE/PCA observations of Cyg X-1 from 1996-1998. We found a tight correlation between the characteristic noise frequencies (e.g. the break frequency nu_br) and the spectral parameters in the low spectral state. The amplitude of…
Time lags due to X-ray reverberation have been detected in several Seyfert galaxies. The different travel time between reflected and directly observed rays naturally causes this type of lag, which depends directly on the light-crossing…
We present results from RXTE data obtained during a systematic monitoring program of four Seyfert galaxies (NGC5548, NGC5506, MCG-6-30-15 and NGC4051). We studied the variability of three hardness ratios derived from the light curves in…
We compute the hard X-ray spectra from a hot plasma pervaded by small cold dense clouds. The main cooling mechanism of the plasma is Compton cooling by the soft thermal emission from the clouds. We compute numerically the equilibrium…
The presence of an obscuring torus around the nucleus of Seyfert galaxies, as supposed in the popular unification scheme, can strongly modify the X--ray spectrum for both type 1 and 2 Seyfert galaxies. We find that if the torus is Compton…
We investigate the X-ray spectrum of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 4151 using the simultaneous Suzaku/NuSTAR observation and flux-resolved INTEGRAL spectra supplemented by Suzaku and XMM observations. Our best spectral solution indicates that the…