X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy with Improved Calculations of the Emission Angle
Creators
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1.
Fudan University
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2.
University of Tübingen
- 3. School of Natural Sciences and Humanities, New Uzbekistan University, Tashkent 100007, Uzbekistan
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4.
University of Oxford
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5.
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
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6.
Goddard Space Flight Center
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7.
California Institute of Technology
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8.
Newcastle University
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9.
University of Warwick
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10.
University of Milan
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11.
Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori di Pavia
Abstract
The reflection spectrum produced by a cold medium illuminated by X-ray photons is not isotropic and its shape depends on the emission angle. In the reflection spectrum of an accretion disk of a black hole, the value of the emission angle changes over the disk and, in general, is different from the value of the inclination angle of the disk because of the light bending in the strong gravitational field of the black hole. Current reflection models make some approximations, as calculating a reflection spectrum taking the correct emission angle at every point of the disk into account would be too time-consuming and make the model too slow to analyze observations. In a recent paper, we showed that these approximations are unsuitable to fit high-quality black hole spectra expected from the next generation of X-ray missions. Here, we present a reflection model with improved calculations of the emission angle that solves this problem.
Copyright and License
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), grant Nos. 12250610185 and 12261131497, and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai, grant No. 22ZR1403400. T.D. acknowledges support from the DFG research unit FOR 5195 (Project No. 443220636, grant No. WI 1860/20-1). G.M. acknowledges financial support from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101107057.
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Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2506.00946 (arXiv)
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 12250610185
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 12261131497
- STCSM ∣ Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai Municipality
- 22ZR1403400
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- WI 1860/20-1
- European Union
- 101107057
Dates
- Accepted
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2025-07-15
- Available
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2025-08-13Published