Emergent Spectra From Disks Surrounding Kerr Black Holes: Effect of Photon Trapping and Disk Self-Shadowing

TL;DR

This study investigates how photon trapping and disk self-shadowing affect the emergent spectra of relativistic slim accretion disks around Kerr black holes, revealing significant influences on spectral modeling and black hole spin measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent disk model considering self-shadowing and photon trapping effects, improving the accuracy of spectral predictions for Kerr black hole accretion disks.

Findings

Photon trapping causes outer disk radiation to escape inward, affecting spectra.

Disk self-shadowing, enhanced by light-bending, significantly alters observed luminosity.

Standard spectral models may be invalid at high inclination and luminosity.

Abstract

Based on a new estimation of their thickness, the global properties of relativistic slim accretion disks are investigated in this work. The resulting emergent spectra are calculated using the relativistic ray-tracing method, in which we neglect the self-irradiation of the accretion disk. The angular dependence of the disk luminosity, the effects of the heat advection and the disk thickness on the estimation of the black hole spin are discussed. Compare to the previous works, our improvements are that we use the self-consistent disk equations and we consider the disk self-shadowing effect. We find that at the moderate accretion rate, the radiation trapped in the outer region of the accretion disks will escape in the inner region of the accretion disk and contribute to the emergent spectra. At the high accretion rate, for the large inclination and large black hole spin, both the disk thickness and the heat advection have significant influence on the emergent spectra. Consequently, these effects will influence the measurement of the black hole spin based on the spectra fitting and influence the angular dependence of the luminosity. For the disks around Kerr black holes with $a=0.98$, if the disk inclination is greater than $60^\circ$, and their luminosity is beyond 0.2 Eddington luminosity, the spectral model which is based on the relativistic standard accretion disk is no longer applicable for the spectra fitting. We also confirm that the effect of the self-shadowing is significantly enhanced by the light-bending, which implies that the non-relativistic treatment of the self-shadowing is inaccurate. According to our results, the observed luminosity dependence of the measured spin suggests that the disk self-shadowing significantly shapes the spectra of GRS 1915+105, which might lead to the underestimation of the black hole spin for the high luminosity states.