Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Oct 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001aipc..587..121p&link_type=abstract
GAMMA 2001: Gamma-Ray Astrophysics 2001. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 587, pp. 121-125 (2001).
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Galactic Nuclei, Circumnuclear Matter, And Bulges, X-Ray Sources, X-Ray Bursts
Scientific paper
We discuss the effects of a comptonizing corona on the appearance of the reflection components, and in particular of the reflection hump, in the X-rays spectra of accreting black holes. Indeed, in the framework of a thermal corona model, we expect that part of (or even all, depending on the corona covering factor) the reflection features should cross the hot plasma, and thus suffer Compton scattering, before being observed. We have studied in detail the dependence of these effects on the physical (i.e. the temperature and optical depth) and geometrical (i.e. the inclination angle) parameters of the corona, concentrating on the slab geometry. Due to the smoothing and shifting towards high energies of the comptonized reflection hump, the main effects on the emerging spectra appear mainly above 100 keV. We have also investigated the importance of such effects on the interpretation of the results obtained with the standard fitting procedures. We found that fitting Comptonization models, taking into account comptonized reflection, by the usual cut-off power law+uncomptonized reflection model, may lead to an underestimation of the reflection normalization and an overestimation of the high energy cut-off. We discuss and illustrate the importance of these effects by analyzing recent observational results as those of the galaxy NGC 4258. We also find that the comptonizing corona can produce and/or emphasize correlations between the reflection features characteristics (like the iron line equivalent width or the covering fraction) and the X-ray spectral index similar to those recently reported in the literature. We also underline the importance of these effects when dealing with accurate spectral fitting of the X-ray background. .
Fabian Andrew
Gallo Elena
Haardt Francesco
Malzac Julien
Merloni Andrea
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