Next Generation Accretion Disk Reflection Model: High-Density Plasma Effects

TL;DR

This paper updates the XILLVER reflection model to include high-density plasma effects, revealing significant spectral features that could explain observed iron overabundances in black hole accretion disks.

Contribution

It introduces high-density plasma corrections into the XILLVER model, emphasizing the impact of recombination rates on X-ray reflection spectra.

Findings

High-density effects produce strong iron and oxygen resonance features.

Updated models can explain supersolar iron abundances in some sources.

Recombination rates are crucial in high-density plasma modeling.

Abstract

Luminous accretion disks around black holes are expected to have densities of $\sim 10^{15-22}\,$cm$^{-3}$, which are high enough such that plasma physics effects become important. Many of these effects have been traditionally neglected in the calculation of atomic parameters, and therefore from photoionization models, and ultimately also from X-ray reflection models. In this paper, we describe updates to the atomic rates used by the XSTAR code, which is in turn part of the XILLVER disk reflection model. We discuss the effect of adding necessary high density corrections into the XILLVER code. Specifically, we find that the change of recombination rates play an important role, dominating the differences between model versions. With synthetic spectra, we show that even in a highly ionized state, high density slabs can produce strong iron ($\sim$6.5-9$\,$keV) and oxygen ($\sim0.6-0.8\,$keV) resonance features. The significant iron emission could address the problem of the supersolar iron abundances found in some sources.