On Estimating the High-Energy Cutoff in the X-Ray Spectra of Black Holes via Reflection Spectroscopy

Abstract

The fundamental parameters describing the coronal spectrum of an accreting black hole are the slope Γ of the power-law continuum and the energy E_(cut) at which it rolls over. Remarkably, this latter parameter can be accurately measured for values as high as 1 MeV by modeling the spectrum of X-rays reflected from a black hole accretion disk at energies below 100 keV. This is possible because the details in the reflection spectrum, rich in fluorescent lines and other atomic features, are very sensitive to the spectral shape of the hardest coronal radiation illuminating the disk. We show that by fitting simultaneous NuSTAR (3–79 keV) and low-energy (e.g., Suzaku) data with the most recent version of our reflection model relxill one can obtain reasonable constraints on E_(cut) at energies from tens of keV up to 1 MeV, for a source as faint as 1 mCrab in a 100 ks observation.