The Sizes of the X-ray and Optical Emission Regions of RXJ1131-1231

TL;DR

This study uses gravitational microlensing to measure the sizes of optical and X-ray emission regions in a quasar, revealing that X-ray emission occurs very close to the black hole, while optical emission originates from a larger disk.

Contribution

First measurement of optical and X-ray emission region sizes in a quasar using microlensing, providing insights into accretion disk structure and black hole environment.

Findings

X-ray emission region size: ~2.3 x 10^14 cm

Optical emission region size: ~1.3 x 10^15 cm

X-ray emission occurs near 10 gravitational radii

Abstract

We use gravitational microlensing of the four images of the z=0.658 quasar RXJ1131-1231 to measure the sizes of the optical and X-ray emission regions of the quasar. The (face-on) scale length of the optical disk at rest frame 400 nm is 1.3 10^15cm, while the half-light radius of the rest frame 0.3-17 keV X-ray emission is 2.3 10^14cm. The formal uncertainties are factors of 1.6 and 2.0, respectively. With the exception of the lower limit on the X-ray size, the results are very stable against any changes in the priors used in the analysis. Based on the Hbeta line-width, we estimate that the black hole mass is ~10^8 Msun, which corresponds to a gravitational radius of r_g~2 10^13 cm. Thus, the X-ray emission is emerging on scales of ~10r_g and the 400 nm emission on scales of ~70 r_g. A standard thin disk of this size should be significantly brighter than observed. Possible solutions are to have a flatter temperature profile or to scatter a large fraction of the optical flux on larger scales after it is emitted. While our calculations were not optimized to constrain the dark matter fraction in the lens galaxy, dark matter dominated models are favored. With well-sampled optical and X-ray light curves over a broad range of frequencies there will be no difficulty in extending our analysis to completely map the structure of the accretion disk as a function of wavelength.