Related papers: Line Profiles from Different Accretion Engine Geom…
A global view is given of how emission lines have been, and may in the future, be used to enhance our understanding of AGN. Lines from the microwave to the X-ray bands all contribute. Although we have a deep understanding of the physical…
Observations of several gravitationally microlensed quasars in X-rays revealed variations in the profile of the iron K$\alpha$ line in the course of microlensing events. We explore the effect by simulating a microlensing caustic crossing a…
Observations of AGNs and microquasars by ASCA, RXTE, Chandra and XMM-Newton indicate the existence of broad X-ray emission lines of ionized heavy elements in their spectra. Such spectral lines were discovered also in X-ray spectra of…
The observed iron K-alpha fluorescence lines in Seyfert galaxies provide strong evidence for an accretion disk near a supermassive black hole as a source of the line emission. Previous studies of line emission have considered only…
We consider the spectra of Thomson-thick, geometrically-thin accretion discs around Galactic black hole candidates in the reflection model and compute their iron K edges and iron K$\alpha$ lines. We compare the smeared iron K edge profiles…
XMM-Newton observations of type I AGN are presented. The properties of the iron K emission line are reviewed, the majority of AGN observed by XMM-Newton show narrow, unresolved (by XMM) iron lines at 6.4 keV from cold matter that must…
In this work we show that Bardeen-Petterson accretion disks can exhibit unique, detectable features in relativistically broadened emission line profiles. Some of the unique characteristics include inverted line profiles with sharper red…
Broad emission lines, particularly broad iron-K lines, are now commonly seen in the X-ray spectra of luminous AGN and Galactic black hole binaries. Sensitive NuSTAR spectra over the energy range of 3-78 keV and high frequency reverberation…
We have modeled a small sample of Seyfert galaxies that were previously identified as having simple X-ray spectra with little intrinsic absorption. The sources in this sample all contain moderately broad components of Fe K-shell emission…
In this contribution, I briefly review recent progress in detecting and measuring the properties of relativistic iron lines observed in stellar-mass black hole systems, and the aspects of these lines that are most relevant to studies of…
A small number of LINERs have been seen to display variable H-alpha emission with a very broad, double-peaked profile. Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that such emission may be a common attribute of LINERs. The…
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…
An increasing number of AGNs exhibit broad, double-peaked Balmer emission lines, which arise from the outer regions of the accretion disk which fuels the AGN. The line profiles vary on timescales of 5--10 years. Our group has monitored a…
We have explored spectral line profiles due to spiral patterns in accretion discs around black holes. A parametrization was employed for the shape and emissivity of spiral waves, which can be produced by non-axisymmetric perturbations…
We present results from new calculations of the X-ray reflection spectrum from ionized accretion discs. These computations improve on our previous models by including the condition of hydrostatic balance in the vertical direction, following…
Accretion flows toward black holes can be of a quite different nature, described as an optically thick cool gas flow in a disk for high accretion rates or as a hot coronal optically thin gas flow for low accretion rates, possibly affected…
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…
Accretion models predict that fluorescence lines broadened by relativistic effects should arise from reflection of X-ray emission onto the inner region of the accretion disc surrounding the central black hole of active galactic nuclei…
We present angle-dependent, broad-band intensity spectra from accretion disks around black holes of 10 M$_\odot$. In our computations disks are assumed to be slim, which means that the radial advection is taken into account while computing…
We study the multiwavelength properties of an optically selected sample of Low Ionization Nuclear Emission-line Regions (LINERs), in an attempt to determine the accretion mechanism powering their central engine. We show how their X-ray…