Compton Scattering in Static and Moving Media. II. System-Frame Solutions for Spherically Symmetric Flows

Abstract

I study the formation of Comptonization spectra in spherically symmetric, fast moving media in a flat spacetime. I analyze the mathematical character of the moments of the transfer equation in the system-frame and describe a numerical method that provides fast solutions of the time-independent radiative transfer problem that are accurate in both the diffusion and free-streaming regimes. I show that even if the flows are mildly relativistic (V~0.1, where V is the electron bulk velocity in units of the speed of light), terms that are second-order in V alter the emerging spectrum both quantitatively and qualitatively. In particular, terms that are second-order in V produce power-law spectral tails, which are the dominant feature at high energies, and therefore cannot be neglected. I further show that photons from a static source are upscattered by the bulk motion of the medium even if the velocity field does not converge. Finally, I discuss these results in the context of radial accretion onto and outflows from compact objects.

28 pages, 9 figures; minor changes, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (6)

• Advection-Dominated Accretion and the Spectral States of Black Hole X-Ray Binaries: Application to Nova Muscae 1991
• X-ray Spectral Formation in a Converging Fluid Flow: Spherical Accretion into Black Holes
• The converging inflow spectrum is an intrinsic signature for a black hole: Monte-Carlo simulations of Comptonization on free-falling electrons
• The Extended Power Law as Intrinsic Signature For a Black Hole
• Compton Scattering by Static and Moving Media I. The Transfer Equation and Its Moments
• Compton scattering of polarized radiation in two phase accretion disks in active galactic nuclei

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