Relativistic spectral features from X-ray-illuminated spots and the measure of the black hole mass in active galactic nuclei
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, the authors present detailed line profiles as a function of orbital phase of the spot and its radial distance from a central black hole, which can provide a powerful tool to measure the mass of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei.Abstract:
Narrow spectral features in the 5-6 keV range were recently discovered in the X-ray spectra of a few active galactic nuclei. We discuss the possibility that these features are due to localized spots which occur on the surface of an accretion disc following its illumination by flares. We present detailed line profiles as a function of orbital phase of the spot and its radial distance from a central black hole. Comparison of these computed profiles with observed features can help to estimate parameters of the system. In principle, this method can provide a powerful tool to measure the mass of super-massive black holes in active galactic nuclei. By comparing our simulations with the Chandra and XMM-Newton results, we show, however, that spectra from present generation X-ray satellites are not of good enough quality to exploit the method fully and determine the black hole mass with sufficient accuracy. This task has to be deferred to future missions with high throughput and high energy resolution, such as Constellation-X and Xeus.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Relativistic X-Ray Lines from the Inner Accretion Disks Around Black Holes
TL;DR: Relativistic X-ray emission lines from the inner accretion disks around black holes are reviewed in this article, and the robustness of the relativistic disk lines against absorption, scattering, and continuum effects is discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Large Observatory For X-ray Timing: LOFT
Marco Feroci,Luigi Stella,M. van der Klis,T. J.-L. Courvoisier,Margarita Hernanz,René Hudec,Andrea Santangelo,Dom Walton,A. A. Zdziarski,Didier Barret,Tomaso Belloni,João Braga,Søren Brandt,Carl Budtz-Jørgensen,Sergio Campana,J. W. den Herder,Juhani Huovelin,G. L. Israel,Martin Pohl,Paul S. Ray,A. Vacchi,Silvia Zane,A. Argan,Primo Attina,Giuseppe Bertuccio,Enrico Bozzo,Riccardo Campana,Deepto Chakrabarty,Enrico Costa,A. de Rosa,E. Del Monte,S. Di Cosimo,I. Donnarumma,Y. Evangelista,D. Haas,Peter G. Jonker,S. Korpela,Claudio Labanti,Piero Malcovati,Roberto Mignani,Fabio Muleri,Massimo Rapisarda,Massimo Rapisarda,Alexander Rashevsky,Nanda Rea,Alda Rubini,C. Tenzer,Colleen A. Wilson-Hodge,Berend Winter,K. S. Wood,G. Zampa,N. Zampa,Marek A. Abramowicz,M. A. Alpar,Diego Altamirano,Diego Altamirano,J. M. Alvarez,Lorenzo Amati,C. Amoros,Louis Antonelli,R. Artigue,P. Azzarello,Matteo Bachetti,Giuseppe Baldazzi,Marco Barbera,Cesare Barbieri,Stéphane Basa,Altan Baykal,R. Belmont,L. Boirin,V. Bonvicini,Luciano Burderi,M. Bursa,C. Cabanac,Edward M. Cackett,G. A. Caliandro,Piergiorgio Casella,Sylvain Chaty,Jérôme Chenevez,M. J. Coe,Alfonso Collura,Alessandro Corongiu,Stefano Covino,Giancarlo Cusumano,Flavio D'Amico,S. Dall'Osso,D. de Martino,G. De Paris,G. Di Persio,T. Di Salvo,Chris Done,M. Dovčiak,Alessandro Drago,Ünal Ertan,Sergio Fabiani,M. Falanga,Rob Fender,P. Ferrando,Desiree Della Monica Ferreira,G.W. Fraser,Filippo Frontera,F. Fuschino,J. L. Galvez,Poshak Gandhi,P. Giommi,O. Godet,E. Göǧüş,Andrea Goldwurm,D. Gotz,Marco Grassi,P. Guttridge,Pasi Hakala,Gilles Henri,W. Hermsen,J. Horak,Allan Hornstrup,J. J. M. in 't Zand,Jordi Isern,Emrah Kalemci,Gottfried Kanbach,V. Karas,Dhiren Kataria,T. Kennedy,D. Klochkov,W. Kluźniak,Kostas D. Kokkotas,I. Kreykenbohm,Julian H. Krolik,L. Kuiper,Irfan Kuvvetli,Nikolaos D. Kylafis,James M. Lattimer,Francesco Lazzarotto,Denis Leahy,Francois Lebrun,Dacheng Lin,Niels Lund,Thomas J. Maccarone,Julien Malzac,Martino Marisaldi,Adrian Martindale,M. Mastropietro,Jeffrey E. McClintock,I. M. McHardy,Mariano Mendez,Sandro Mereghetti,M. C. Miller,Teresa Mineo,Ennio Morelli,Sharon M. Morsink,C. Motch,S. Motta,T. Muñoz-Darias,Giampiero Naletto,Vitaly Neustroev,Jukka Nevalainen,J. F. Olive,Marina Orio,Mauro Orlandini,Piotr Orleanski,Feryal Özel,Luigi Pacciani,Stéphane Paltani,I. E. Papadakis,Alessandro Papitto,Alessandro Patruno,A. Pellizzoni,V. Petracek,J. Petri,P.-O. Petrucci,B. F. Phlips,L. Picolli,A. Possenti,Dimitrios Psaltis,Damien Rambaud,Pablo Reig,Ron Remillard,J. L. Rodriguez,P. Romano,Marina M. Romanova,Thomas Schanz,Christian Schmid,A. Segreto,Andrew Shearer,Alan Smith,Philip J. Smith,Paolo Soffitta,Nikolaos Stergioulas,Marcin Stolarski,Zdeněk Stuchlík,Andrea Tiengo,Diego F. Torres,Gabriel Török,R. Turolla,Phil Uttley,Simon Vaughan,S. Vercellone,R. Waters,Anna L. Watts,Roman Wawrzaszek,N. A. Webb,Jörn Wilms,Luca Zampieri,Andreas Zezas,J. Ziolkowski +204 more
TL;DR: The Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT) was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) Cosmic Vision Theme "Matter under extreme conditions", namely: does matter orbiting close to the event horizon follow the predictions of general relativity? What is the equation of state of matter in neutron stars? LOFT, selected by ESA as one of the four Cosmic Vision M3 candidate missions to undergo an assessment phase, will revolutionise the study of collapsed objects in our galaxy and of the brightest supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei.
Journal ArticleDOI
X-ray Absorption and Reflection in Active Galactic Nuclei
T. J. Turner,L. Miller +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, Chandra, XMM-Newton and Suzaku data for local type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) X-ray spectra have been studied.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Large Observatory for X-ray Timing (LOFT)
TL;DR: The Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT) was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) Cosmic Vision Theme "Matter under extreme conditions", namely: does matter orbiting close to the event horizon follow the predictions of general relativity? What is the equation of state of matter in neutron stars?
Proceedings ArticleDOI
The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU)
Didier Barret,Thein Lam Trong,Jan-Willem den Herder,Luigi Piro,Xavier Barcons,Juhani Huovelin,Richard L. Kelley,J. Miguel Mas-Hesse,Kazuhisa Mitsuda,Stéphane Paltani,Gregor Rauw,Agata Różańska,Joern Wilms,Marco Barbera,Enrico Bozzo,María Teresa Ceballos,Ivan Charles,Anne Decourchelle,Roland den Hartog,J. M. Duval,Fabrizio Fiore,Flavio Gatti,Andrea Goldwurm,Brian Jackson,Peter G. Jonker,Caroline A. Kilbourne,Claudio Macculi,Mariano Mendez,Silvano Molendi,Piotr Orleanski,François Pajot,Etienne Pointecouteau,Frederick S. Porter,Gabriel W. Pratt,Damien Prêle,L. Ravera,Etienne Renotte,Joop Schaye,Keisuke Shinozaki,Luca Valenziano,Jacco Vink,Natalie A. Webb,Noriko Y. Yamasaki,Françoise Delcelier-Douchin,Michel Le Du,Jean-Michel Mesnager,Alice Pradines,Graziella Branduardi-Raymont,Mauro Dadina,Alexis Finoguenov,Yasushi Fukazawa,Agnieszka Janiuk,Jon M. Miller,Yaël Nazé,Fabrizio Nicastro,Salvatore Sciortino,Jose Miguel Torrejon,Hervé Geoffray,Isabelle Hernandez,Laure Luno,Philippe Peille,Jérôme André,Christophe Daniel,Christophe Etcheverry,Emilie Gloaguen,Jeremie Hassin,Gilles Hervet,Irwin Maussang,Jerome Moueza,Alexis Paillet,Bruno Vella,Gonzalo Campos Garrido,Jean-Charles Damery,C. Panem,Johan Panh,Simon R. Bandler,Jean-Marc Biffi,Kevin R. Boyce,Antoine Clénet,Michael J. DiPirro,Pierre Jamotton,Simone Lotti,Denis Schwander,Stephen J. Smith,Bert-Joost van Leeuwen,Henk van Weers,T. Brand,Beatriz Cobo,Thomas Dauser,Jelle de Plaa,Edoardo Cucchetti +90 more
TL;DR: The core scientific objectives of Athena are reviewed, driving the main performance parameters of the X-IFU, namely the spectral resolution, the field of view, the effective area, the count rate capabilities, the instrumental background and the breakthrough potential.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Rotating Black Holes: Locally Nonrotating Frames, Energy Extraction, and Scalar Synchrotron Radiation
Journal ArticleDOI
Broad Iron Lines in Active Galactic Nuclei
TL;DR: The fluorescent line in the X-ray band at 6.4-6.9 keV is the strongest such line and is seen in the spectrum of many active galactic nuclei and, in particular, Seyfert galaxies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Fluorescent iron lines as a probe of astrophysical black hole systems
TL;DR: A comprehensive review of relativistic iron line studies for both accreting stellar mass black holes (i.e., GBHCs) and supermassive black holes can be found in this article.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Model for the X-Ray and UV Emission from Seyfert Galaxies and Galactic Black Holes
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed that the X-ray emission from radio quiet AGN and galactic black holes is due to Comptonization of soft thermal photons emitted by the underlying accretion disk in localized structures (blobs).