Probing Accretion Disk Winds of Stratified Nature with Fe XXVI Doublet in Black Hole X-ray Binaries

Abstract

Powerful ionized accretion disk winds are often observed during episodic outbursts in Galactic black hole transients. Among those X-ray absorbers, \fexxvi\ doublet structure (Ly$\hat{I}{\pm }_1$+Ly$\hat{I}{\pm }_2$ with $\sim 20$eV apart) has a unique potential to better probe the underlying physical nature of the wind; i.e. density and kinematics. We demonstrate, based on a physically-motivated magnetic disk wind scenario of a stratified structure in density and velocity, that the doublet line profile can be effectively utilized as a diagnostics to measure wind density and associated velocity dispersion (due to thermal turbulence and/or dynamical shear motion in winds). Our simulated doublet spectra with post-process radiative transfer calculations indicate that the profile can be (1) broad with a single peak for higher velocity dispersion ($\gsim 5,000$ km~s${}^{-1}$), (2) a standard shape with 1:2 canonical flux ratio for moderate dispersion ($\sim 1,000-5,000$ km~s${}^{-1}$) or (3) double-peaked with its flux ratio approaching 1:1 for lower velocity dispersion ($\lsim 1,000$ km~s${}^{-1}$) in optically-thin regime, allowing various line shape. Such a diversity in doublet profile is indeed unambiguously seen in recent observations with XRISM/Resolve at microcalorimeter resolution. We show that some implications inferred from the model will help constrain the local wind physics where \fexxvi\ is predominantly produced in a large-scale, stratified wind.

10 pages, 4 figures, accepted to ApJ