Looking into the inner black hole accretion disc with relativistic models of iron line

TL;DR

This paper examines black hole spin measurements using relativistic iron line profiles, comparing models, analyzing uncertainties, and applying the methods to observational data, highlighting the influence of emission angular distribution and disc truncation.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of how emission angular distribution affects spin measurements and applies relativistic models to real X-ray data of a Seyfert galaxy.

Findings

Spin determination is sensitive to emission angular distribution.

Isotropic emission assumptions yield the most accurate spin estimates.

The observed galaxy shows a truncated accretion disc with minimal relativistic blurring.

Abstract

We discuss black hole spin measurements employing the relativistic iron line profiles in the X-ray domain. We investigate the iron line band for two representative sources -- MCG -6-30-15 (active galaxy) and GX 339-4 (X-ray binary). We compare two models of the broad iron line, LAOR and KYRLINE. We realise that the spin is currently determined entirely from the position of the marginally stable orbit while the effect of the spin on the overall line shape would be resolvable with higher resolution X-ray missions. We show that the precision of the spin measurements depends on an unknown angular distribution of the disc emission. We study how sensitive the spin determination is to the assumptions about the intrinsic angular distribution of the emitted photons. We find that the uncertainty of the directional emission distribution translates to 20% uncertainty in the determination of the radius of marginally stable orbit. We perform radiation transfer computations of an X-ray irradiated disc atmosphere (NOAR code) to determine the directionality of outgoing X-rays in the 2-10 keV energy band. Based on these computations, we find that from the simple formulae for the directionality, the isotropic case reproduces the simulated data with the best accuracy. The most frequently used limb-darkening law favours higher values of spin and, in addition, a steeper radial emissivity profile. Furthermore, we present a spectral analysis of an XMM-Newton observation of a Seyfert 1.5 galaxy IRAS 05078+1626 being the first X-ray spectroscopic study of this source. The lack of the significant relativistic blurring of the reflection model component suggests the accretion disc to be truncated at a farther radius.