High-Energy Spectral Complexity from Thermal Gradients in Black Hole Atmospheres | Zendy

J. G. Skibo | Zendy; C. D. Dermer | Zendy

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High-Energy Spectral Complexity from Thermal Gradients in Black Hole Atmospheres

Author(s) -

J. G. Skibo,

C. D. Dermer

Publication year - 1995

Publication title -

the astrophysical journal

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.376

H-Index - 489

eISSN - 1538-4357

pISSN - 0004-637X

DOI - 10.1086/309809

Subject(s) - physics , spectral line , photon , compton scattering , plasma , black hole (networking) , astrophysics , scattering , atomic physics , thermal , accretion (finance) , hardening (computing) , optics , nuclear physics , materials science , astronomy , computer network , routing protocol , routing (electronic design automation) , meteorology , computer science , link state routing protocol , layer (electronics) , composite material

We show that Compton scattering of soft photons with energies near 100 eV inthermally stratified black-hole accretion plasmas with temperatures in therange 100 keV - 1 MeV can give rise to an X-ray spectral hardening near 10 keV.This could produce the hardening observed in the X-ray spectra of black holes,which is generally attributed to reflection or partial covering of the incidentcontinuum source by cold optically thick matter. In addition, we show that thepresence of very hot (kT=1 MeV) cores in plasmas leads to spectra exibitinghigh energy tails similar to those observed from Galactic black-holecandidates.Comment: 11 pages, uuencoded gziped postscript, ApJ Letters in pres

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