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Register a new userIron Line Tomography of General Relativistic Hydrodynamic Accretion around Kerr Black Holes
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We consider a temporal response of relativistically broadened line spectrum of iron from black hole accretion irradiated by an X-ray echo under strong gravity. The physical condition of accreting gas is numerically calculated in the context of general relativistic hydrodynamics under steady-state, axisymmetry in Kerr geometry. With the onset of a point-like X-ray flare of a short finite duration just above the accretion surface, the gas is assumed to be ionized to produce a neutral iron fluorescent line. Using a fully relativistic ray-tracing approach, the response of line photons due to the X-ray illumination is traced as a function of time and energy for different source configurations around sw and Kerr black holes. Our calculations show that the X-ray echo on the accretion surface clearly imprints a characteristic time-variability in the line spectral features depending on those parameters. Simulated line profiles, aimed for the future microcalorimeter missions of large collecting area such as {it Athena}/X-IFU for typical radio-quiet Seyfert galaxies, are presented to demonstrate that state-of-the-art new observations could differentiate various source parameters by such an X-ray tomographic line reverberation.
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Black hole (BH) accretion flows and jets are qualitatively affected by the presence of ordered magnetic fields. We study fully three-dimensional global general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of radially extended and thick (height $H$ to cylindrical radius $R$ ratio of $|H/R|sim 0.2--1$) accretion flows around BHs with various dimensionless spins ($a/M$, with BH mass $M$) and with initially toroidally-dominated ($phi$-directed) and poloidally-dominated ($R-z$ directed) magnetic fields. Firstly, for toroidal field models and BHs with high enough $|a/M|$, coherent large-scale (i.e. $gg H$) dipolar poloidal magnetic flux patches emerge, thread the BH, and generate transient relativistic jets. Secondly, for poloidal field models, poloidal magnetic flux readily accretes through the disk from large radii and builds-up to a natural saturation point near the BH. For sufficiently high $|a/M|$ or low $|H/R|$ the polar magnetic field compresses the inflow into a geometrically thin highly non-axisymmetric magnetically choked accretion flow (MCAF) within which the standard linear magneto-rotational instability is suppressed. The condition of a highly-magnetized state over most of the horizon is optimal for the Blandford-Znajek mechanism that generates persistent relativistic jets with $gtrsim 100$% efficiency for $|a/M|gtrsim 0.9$. A magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor and Kelvin-Helmholtz unstable magnetospheric interface forms between the compressed inflow and bulging jet magnetosphere, which drives a new jet-disk quasi-periodic oscillation (JD-QPO) mechanism. The high-frequency QPO has spherical harmonic $|m|=1$ mode period of $tausim 70GM/c^3$ for $a/Msim 0.9$ with coherence quality factors $Qgtrsim 10$. [abridged]
The analysis of the thermal spectrum of geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disks of black holes, the so-called continuum-fitting method, is one of the leading techniques for measuring black hole spins. Current models normally approximate the disk as infinitesimally thin, while in reality the disk thickness is finite and increases as the black hole mass accretion rate increases. Here we present an XSPEC model to calculate the multi-temperature blackbody spectrum of a thin accretion disk of finite thickness around a Kerr black hole. We test our new model with an RXTE observation of the black hole binary GRS 1915+105. We find that the spin value inferred with the new model is slightly higher than the spin value obtained with a model with an infinitesimally thin disk, but the difference is small and the effect is currently subdominant with respect to other sources of uncertainties in the final spin measurement.
Very-long baseline interferometric observations have resolved structure on scales of only a few Schwarzschild radii around the supermassive black holes at the centers of our Galaxy and M87. In the near future, such observations are expected to image the shadows of these black holes together with a bright and narrow ring surrounding their shadows. For a Kerr black hole, the shape of this photon ring is nearly circular unless the black hole spins very rapidly. Whether or not, however, astrophysical black holes are truly described by the Kerr metric as encapsulated in the no-hair theorem still remains an untested assumption. For black holes that differ from Kerr black holes, photon rings have been shown numerically to be asymmetric for small to intermediate spins. In this paper, I calculate semi-analytic expressions of the shapes of photon rings around black holes described by a new Kerr-like metric which is valid for all spins. I show that photon rings in this spacetime are affected by two types of deviations from the Kerr metric which can cause the ring shape to be highly asymmetric. I argue that the ring asymmetry is a direct measure of a potential violation of the no-hair theorem and that both types of deviations can be detected independently if the mass and distance of the black hole are known. In addition, I obtain approximate expressions of the diameters, displacements, and asymmetries of photon rings around Kerr and Kerr-like black holes.
We use global three dimensional radiation magneto-hydrodynamic simulations to study the properties of inner regions of accretion disks around a 5times 10^8 solar mass black hole with mass accretion rates reaching 7% and 20% of the Eddington value. This region of the disk is supported by magnetic pressure with surface density significantly smaller than the values predicted by the standard thin disk model but with a much larger disk scale height. The disks do not show any sign of thermal instability over many thermal time scales. More than half of the accretion is driven by radiation viscosity in the optically thin corona region for the lower accretion rate case, while accretion in the optically thick part of the disk is driven by the Maxwell and Reynolds stresses from MRI turbulence. Coronae with gas temperatures > 10^8 K are generated only in the inner approx 10 gravitational radii in both simulations, being more compact in the higher accretion rate case. In contrast to the thin disk model, surface density increases with increasing mass accretion rate, which causes less dissipation in the optically thin region and a relatively weaker corona. The simulation results may explain the formation of X-ray coronae in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), the compact size of such coronae, and the observed trend of optical to X-ray luminosity with Eddington ratio for many AGNs.
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 an accretion disk. Given their abundance and fluorescence yield, the iron K-shell lines are the most prominent features in the X-ray reflected spectrum. Their line profiles can be grossly broadened and skewed by Doppler effects and gravitational redshift. Consequently, modeling the reflection spectrum provides one of the best methods to measure, among other physical quantities, the black-hole spin. At present the accuracy of the spin estimates is called into question because the data fits require very high iron abundances: typically several times the solar value. Concurrently no plausible physical explanation has been proffered for these black-hole systems to be so iron rich. The most likely explanation for the supersolar iron abundances is model shortfall at very high densities ($>10^{18}$ cm$^{-3}$) due to atomic data shortcomings in this regime. We review the current observational evidence for the iron supersolar abundance in many black-hole systems, and show the effects of high density in state-of-the-art reflection models. We also briefly discuss our current efforts to produce new atomic data for high-density plasmas, which are required to refine the photoionization models.
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