Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Scientific paper
2009-07-13
Astrophys.J.704:L113-L117,2009
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
submitted to ApJL, 2 figs
Scientific paper
10.1088/0004-637X/704/2/L113
Non-thermal X-ray emission in compact accretion engines can be interpreted to result from magnetic dissipation in an optically thin magnetized corona above an optically thick accretion disk. If coronal magnetic field originates in the disk and the disk is turbulent, then only magnetic structures large enough for their turbulent shredding time to exceed their buoyant rise time survive the journey to the corona. We use this concept and a physical model to constrain the minimum fraction of magnetic energy above the critical scale for buoyancy as a function of the observed coronal to bolometric emission. Our results suggest that a significant fraction of the magnetic energy in accretion disks resides in large scale fields, which in turn provides circumstantial evidence for significant non-local transport phenomena and the need for large scale magnetic field generation. For the example of Seyfert AGN, for which of order 30 per cent of the bolometric flux is in the X-ray band, we find that more than 20 per cent of the magnetic energy must be of large enough scale to rise and dissipate in the corona.
Blackman Eric G.
Pessah Martin E.
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