Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userMagnetic-reconnection-heated corona in active galactic nuclei: refined disc-corona model and application to broad-band radiation
105
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
A long-standing question in active galactic nucleus (AGN) research is how the corona is heated up to produce X-ray radiation much stronger than that arising from the viscous heating within the corona. In this paper, we carry out detailed investigations of magnetic-reconnection heating to the corona, specifically, studying how the disc and corona are self-consistently coupled with the magnetic field, and how the emergent spectra depend on the fundamental parameters of AGN. It is shown that diverse spectral shapes and luminosities over a broad bandpass from optical to X-ray can be produced from the coupled disc and corona within a limited range of the black hole mass, accretion rate and magnetic field strength. The relative strength of X-ray emission with respect to optical/ultraviolet (UV) depends on the strength of the magnetic field in the disc, which, together with accretion rate, determines the fraction of accretion energy transported and released in the corona. This refined disc-corona model is then applied to reproduce the broad-band spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of a sample of 20 bright local AGNs observed simultaneously in X-ray and optical/UV. We find that, in general, the overall observed broad-band SEDs can be reasonably reproduced, except for rather hard X-ray spectral shapes in some objects. The radiation pressure-dominant region, as previously predicted for the standard accretion disc in AGN, disappears for strong X-ray sources, revealing that AGN accretion discs are indeed commonly stable as observed. Our study suggests the disc-corona coupling model involving magnetic fields to be a promising approach for understanding the broad-band spectra of bright AGNs.
rate research
Read More
Warm coronae, thick ($tau_{mathrm{T}}approx 10$-$20$, where $tau_{mathrm{T}}$ is the Thomson depth) Comptonizing regions with temperatures of $sim 1$ keV, are proposed to exist at the surfaces of accretion discs in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). By combining with the reflection spectrum, warm coronae may be responsible for producing the smooth soft excess seen in AGN X-ray spectra. This paper studies how a warm corona must adjust in order to sustain the soft excess through large changes in the AGN flux. Spectra from one-dimensional constant density and hydrostatic warm coronae models are calculated assuming the illuminating hard X-ray power-law, gas density, Thomson depth and coronal heating strength vary in response to changes in the accretion rate. We identify models that produce warm coronae with temperatures between $0.3$ and $1.1$ keV, and measure the photon indices and emitted fluxes in the $0.5$-$2$ keV and $2$-$10$ keV bands. Correlations and anti-correlations between these quantities depend on the evolution and structure of the warm corona. Tracing the path that an AGN follows through these correlations will constrain how warm coronae are heated and connected to the accretion disc. Variations in the density structure and coronal heating strength of warm coronae will lead to a variety of soft excess strengths and shapes in AGNs. A larger accretion rate will, on average, lead to a warm corona that produces a stronger soft excess, consistent with observations of local Seyfert galaxies.
The X-ray emission from bright active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is believed to originate in a hot corona lying above a cold, geometrically thin accretion disk. A highly concentrated corona located within $sim10$ gravitational radii above the black hole is inferred from observations. Based on the accretion of interstellar medium/wind, a disk corona model has been proposed in which the corona is well coupled to the disk by radiation, thermal conduction, as well as by mass exchange citep{Liu2015, Qiao2017}. Such a model avoids artificial energy input to the corona and has been used to interpret the spectral features observed in AGN. In this work, it is shown that the bulk emission size of the corona is very small for the extended accretion flow in our model. More than 80% of the hard X-ray power is emitted from a small region confined within 10 Schwarzschild radii around a non-spinning black hole, which is expected to be even smaller accordingly for a spinning black hole. Here, the corona emission is more extended at higher Eddington ratios. The compactness parameter of the corona, $l={Lover R}{sigma_{rm T}over m_{rm e} c^3}$, is shown to be in the range of 1-33 for Eddington ratios of 0.02 - 0.1. Combined with the electron temperature in the corona, this indicates that electron--positron pair production is not dominant in this regime. A positive relation between the compactness parameter and photon index is also predicted. By comparing the above model predictions with observational features, we find that the model is in agreement with observations.
It is believed that the hard X-ray emission in the luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is from the hot corona above the cool accretion disk. However, the formation of the corona is still debated. Liu et al. investigated the spectrum of the corona heated by the reconnection of the magnetic field generated by dynamo action in the thin disk and emerging into the corona as a result of buoyancy instability. In the present paper, we improve this model to interpret the observed relation of the hard X-ray spectrum becoming softer at higher accretion rate in luminous AGNs. The magnetic field is characterized by $beta_{rm 0}$, i.e., the ratio of the sum of gas pressure and radiation pressure to magnetic pressure in the disk ($beta_{rm 0}=(P_{rm g,d}+P_{rm r,d})/P_{rm B}$). Besides, both the intrinsic disk photons and reprocessed photons by the disk are included as the seed photons for inverse Compton scattering. These improvements are crucial for investigating the effect of magnetic field on the accretion disk-corona when it is not clear whether the radiation pressure or gas pressure dominates in thin disk. We change the value of $beta_{rm 0}$ in order to constrain the magnetic field in the accretion disk. We find that the energy fraction released in the corona ($f$) gradually increases with the decrease of $beta_{rm 0}$ for the same accretion rate. When $beta_{rm 0}$ decreases to less than 50, the structure and spectrum of the disk-corona is independent on accretion rate, which is similar to the hard spectrum found in Liu et al.(2003). Comparing with the observational results of the hard X-ray bolometric correction factor in a sample of luminous AGNs, we suggest that the value of $beta_{rm 0}$ is about 100-200 for $alpha=0.3$ and the energy fraction $f$ should be larger than $30%$ for hard X-ray emission.
The rest-frame UV/optical variability of the quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 is used to test the Corona-Heated Accretion-disk Reprocessing (CHAR) model of Sun et al. 2020. We adopt our CHAR model and the observed black-hole masses ($M_{mathrm{BH}}$) and luminosities ($L$) to generate mock light curves that share the same measurement noise and sampling as the real observations. Without any fine-tuning, our CHAR model can satisfactorily reproduce the observed ensemble structure functions for different $M_{mathrm{BH}}$, $L$, and rest-frame wavelengths. Our analyses reveal that a luminosity-dependent bolometric correction is disfavored over the constant bolometric correction for UV/optical luminosities. Our work demonstrates the possibility of extracting quasar properties (e.g., the bolometric correction or the dimensionless viscosity parameter) by comparing the physical CHAR model with quasar light curves.
The central engines of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are powered by accreting supermassive black holes, and while AGNs are known to play an important role in galaxy evolution, the key physical processes occur on scales that are too small to be resolved spatially (aside from a few exceptional cases). Reverberation mapping is a powerful technique that overcomes this limitation by using echoes of light to determine the geometry and kinematics of the central regions. Variable ionizing radiation from close to the black hole drives correlated variability in surrounding gas/dust, but with a time delay due to the light travel time between the regions, allowing reverberation mapping to effectively replace spatial resolution with time resolution. Reverberation mapping is used to measure black hole masses and to probe the innermost X-ray emitting region, the UV/optical accretion disk, the broad emission line region and the dusty torus. In this article we provide an overview of the technique and its varied applications.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
