The X-ray Polarization of the Accretion Disk Coronae of Active Galactic Nuclei

TL;DR

This paper presents a new ray-tracing simulation tool to study X-ray polarization from AGN coronae, helping to constrain their geometry and plasma properties through predictions for upcoming polarimetry missions.

Contribution

Developed a versatile ray-tracing code for simulating X-ray polarization in arbitrary AGN corona geometries, including relativistic effects and non-thermal electron impacts.

Findings

Predicted polarization signatures for wedge and spherical coronae.

Assessed the impact of non-thermal electrons and cyclo-synchrotron photons.

Modeled NuSTAR observations to forecast polarization signals.

Abstract

Hard X-rays observed in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are thought to originate from the Comptonization of the optical/UV accretion disk photons in a hot corona. Polarization studies of these photons can help to constrain the corona geometry and the plasma properties. We have developed a ray-tracing code that simulates the Comptonization of accretion disk photons in coronae of arbitrary shape, and use it here to study the polarization of the X-ray emission from wedge and spherical coronae. We study the predicted polarization signatures for the fully relativistic and various approximate treatments of the elemental Compton scattering processes. We furthermore use the code to evaluate the impact of non-thermal electrons and cyclo-synchrotron photons on the polarization properties. Finally, we model the NuSTAR observations of the Seyfert I galaxy Mrk 335 and predict the associated polarization signal. Our studies show that X-ray polarimetry missions such as NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) and the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer (XIPE) proposed to ESA will provide valuable new information about the physical properties of the plasma close to the event horizon of AGN black holes.