The broad Fe Kα line and supermassive black holes

Abstract

Here we present an overview of some of the most significant observational and theoretical studies of the broad Fe Kα spectral line, which is believed to originate from the innermost regions of relativistic accretion disks around central supermassive black holes of galaxies. The most important results of our investigations in this field are also listed. All these investigations indicate that the broad Fe Kα line is a powerful tool for studying the properties of the supermassive black holes (such as their masses and spins), space-time geometry (metric) in their vicinity, their accretion physics, probing the effects of their strong gravitational fields, and for testing the certain predictions of General Relativity.

arXiv comment13 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in New Astronomy Reviews

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• Line shifts in accretion disks - the case of Fe K$\alpha$
• Spectral index distribution over radio lobes of 4C 14.11 using astrophysical data in FITS format
• The shape of Fe K$\alpha$ line emitted from relativistic accretion disc around AGN black holes