paper

Reverberation by a Relativistic Accretion Disk

arXiv:astro-ph/9409049 · doi:10.1093/mnras/272.3.585

Abstract

We calculate the response of a line emitted from a relativistic accretion disk to a continuum variation of the central illuminating source. This model might be relevant to the very broad and sometimes redshifted emission lines which have been observed at optical and X-ray energies in Active Galactic Nuclei and X-ray binaries. We consider separately the cases of a point-like and of an extended central source. Based on the first three moments of the line energy distribution (i.e. the line intensity, centroid energy and width) and the two-dimensional transfer function, we identify a number of characteristic features, which can help assessing the presence of a relativistic accretion disk and estimating its parameters. In particular, by combining an absolute time measurement of the maximum of line response function with a relative measurement in units of light crossing time the mass of the central object can be derived.

E-mail: [email protected] MN (ver 1.0) latex file, #7 pages, #8 figures available upon request, accepted for publication on MNRAS

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