Observational Signatures of Tilted Black Hole Accretion Disks from Simulations

Abstract

Geometrically thick accretion flows may be present in black hole X-ray binaries observed in the low/hard state and in low-luminosity active galactic nuclei. Unlike in geometrically thin disks, the angular momentum axis in these sources is not expected to align with the black hole spin axis. We compute images from three-dimensional general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of misaligned (tilted) accretion flows using relativistic radiative transfer, and compare the estimated locations of the radiation edge with expectations from their aligned (untilted) counterparts. The radiation edge in the tilted simulations is independent of black hole spin for a tilt of 15 degrees, in stark contrast to the results for untilted simulations, which agree with the monotonic dependence on spin expected from thin accretion disk theory. Synthetic emission line profiles from the tilted simulations depend strongly on the observer's azimuth, and exhibit unique features such as broad "blue wings." Coupled with precession, the azimuthal variation could generate time fluctuations in observed emission lines, which would be a clear "signature" of a tilted accretion flow. Finally, we evaluate the possibility that the observed low- and high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) from black hole binaries could be produced by misaligned accretion flows. Although low-frequency QPOs from precessing, tilted disks remains a viable option, we find little evidence for significant power in our light curves in the frequency range of high-frequency QPOs.