The study of the circumnuclear environment of accreting supermassive black holes with realistic X-ray spectral models

TL;DR

This paper introduces new realistic X-ray spectral models for studying the environment around supermassive black holes, using ray-tracing simulations to better understand AGN circumnuclear material.

Contribution

It presents two novel, publicly available spectral models with realistic geometries for analyzing X-ray spectra of AGN environments.

Findings

Models successfully fit the spectrum of NGC 424

Realistic geometries improve interpretation of reprocessed X-ray radiation

Models cover a wide energy range in the X-ray band

Abstract

X-ray spectral modeling is a powerful tool for studying the immediate environment of accreting objects, including supermassive black holes. Several models, either phenomenological or physically driven, have been developed over the past decade to study X-ray spectra, delivering important insights into the properties of circumnuclear material of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Despite the fact that these models are able to reproduce the data well, they often lack realistic geometries, and most of them consist of simplified configurations such as a slab or a torus. We use the ray-tracing code \textsc{RefleX} to generate new spectral models that cover a wide energy range in the X-ray band, adopting a realistic configuration for the surrounding material. We introduce two new table models that are publicly available: 1) the RXToPo model, which features an X-ray source along with a dusty torus and a polar hollow cone; 2) the RXagn1 model, which includes, besides the torus and polar cone, also the accretion disk and the broad line region. Both models were applied to the X-ray spectrum of NGC 424, demonstrating their potential to study sources whose X-ray emission is dominated by reprocessed radiation.