SIMBAD references

2019ApJ...879...35D - Astrophys. J., 879, 35-35 (2019/July-1)

Constraining quasar relativistic reflection regions and spins with microlensing.

DAI X., STEELE S., GUERRAS E., MORGAN C.W. and CHEN B.

Abstract (from CDS):

We present an analysis of Chandra spectra of five gravitationally lensed active galactic nuclei. We confirm the previous detections of FeKα emission lines in most images of these objects with high significance. The line energies range from 5.8 to 6.8 keV, with widths from unresolved to 0.6 keV, consistent with emission close to spinning black holes viewed at different inclination angles. We also confirm the positive offset from the Iwasawa-Taniguchi effect, the inverse correlation between the FeKα equivalent width (EW) and the X-ray luminosity in active galactic nuclei, where our measured EWs are larger in lensed quasars. We attribute this effect to microlensing, and perform a microlensing likelihood analysis to constrain the emission size of the relativistic reflection region and the spin of supermassive black holes, assuming that the X-ray corona and the reflection region, responsible for the iron emission line, both follow power-law emissivity profiles. The microlensing analysis yields strong constraints on the spin and emissivity index of the reflection component for Q 2237+0305, with a > 0.92 and n > 5.4. For the remaining four targets, we jointly constrain the two parameters, yielding a = 0.8 ± 0.16 and an emissivity index of n = 4.0 ± 0.8, suggesting that the relativistic X-ray reflection region is ultracompact and very close to the innermost stable circular orbits of black holes, which are spinning at close to the maximal value. We successfully constrain the half-light radius of the emission region to <2.4 rg (rg = GM/c2) for Q 2237+0305 and in the range 5.9-7.4 rg for the joint sample.

Abstract Copyright: © 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Journal keyword(s): accretion, accretion disks - black hole physics - gravitational lensing: micro - quasars: emission lines - quasars: general - X-rays: galaxies

Simbad objects: 29

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