Broad Iron Lines in AGN and X-ray Binaries.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 4 1 2 2 2 4 v 2 2 0 D e c 2 0 0 4 Broad Iron Lines in AGN and X-ray Binaries A. C. Fabian Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK Abstract. Several AGN and black hole X-ray binaries show a clear very broad iron line which is strong evidence that the black holes are rapidly spinning. Detailed analysis of these objects shows that the emission line is not significantly affected by ab- sorption and that the source variability is principally due to variation in amplitude of a power-law. Underlying this is a much less variable, relativistically-smeared, reflection-dominated, component which carries the imprint of strong gravity at a few gravitational radii. The strong gravitational light bending in these regions then explains the power-law variability as due to changes in height of the primary X-ray source above the disc. The reflection component, in particular its variability and the profile of the iron line, enables us to study the innermost regions around an accreting, spinning, black hole. 1. Introduction Radiatively-efficient accreting black holes are expected to be surrounded by a dense disc radiating quasi-blackbody thermal EUV and soft X-ray emission. Hard X-ray emission originates via Comptonization of that soft radiation in a corona above the disc, fed by magnetic fields from the body of the disc. Irradiation of the dense disc material by hard X- rays then gives rise to a characteristic ‘reflection’ spectrum, computed examples of which are shown in Fig. 1 (from Ross Fabian 2004). Most of the power is radiated from close to the smallest disc radii which for a non-spinning black hole is 6rg, where rg = GM/c 2. For a spinning (Kerr) black hole it reduces as the spin increases (Bardeen et al. 1972) to 1.23 rg for what is assume to be maximal spin (Thorne 1972). Relativistic effects then affect the appearance of the reflection spectrum through Doppler, aberration, gravitational redshift and light bending effe