Spectral and polarization properties of black hole accretion disc emission: including absorption effects

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985815%3A_____%2F21%3A00549680" target="_blank" >RIV/67985815:_____/21:00549680 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3859" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3859</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3859" target="_blank" >10.1093/mnras/staa3859</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Spectral and polarization properties of black hole accretion disc emission: including absorption effects

Original language description

The study of radiation emitted from black hole (BH) accretion discs represents a crucial way to understand the main physical properties of these sources, and in particular the BH spin. Beside spectral analysis, polarimetry is becoming more and more important, motivated by the development of new techniques which will soon allow to perform measurements also in the X- and gamma-rays. Photons emitted from BH accretion discs in the soft state are indeed expected to be polarized, with an energy dependence which can provide an estimate of the BH spin. Calculations performed so far, however, considered scattering as the only process to determine the polarization state of the emitted radiation, implicitly assuming that the temperatures involved are such that material in the disc is entirely ionized. In this work, we generalize the problem by calculating the ionization structure of a surface layer of the disc with the public code cloudy, and then by determining the polarization properties of the emerging radiation using the Monte Carlo code stokes. This allows us to account for absorption effects alongside scattering ones. We show that including absorption can deeply modify the polarization properties of the emerging radiation with respect to what is obtained in the pure-scattering limit. As a general rule, we find that the polarization degree is larger when absorption is more important, which occurs, for example, for low accretion rates and/or spins when the ionization of the matter in the innermost accretion disc regions is far from complete.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

10308 - Astronomy (including astrophysics,space science)

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA18-00533S" target="_blank" >GA18-00533S: Reverberation from Black Hole accretion discs</a><br>

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

ISSN

0035-8711

e-ISSN

1365-2966

Volume of the periodical

501

Issue of the periodical within the volume

3

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

13

Pages from-to

3393-3405

UT code for WoS article

000610549500022

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85100290645