An extended scheme for fitting X-ray data with accretion disk spectra in the strong gravity regime

Abstract

Accreting black holes are believed to emit X-rays which then mediate information about strong gravity in the vicinity of the emission region. We report on a set of new routines for the Xspec package for analysing X-ray spectra of black-hole accretion disks. The new computational tool significantly extends the capabilities of the currently available fitting procedures that include the effects of strong gravity, and allows one to systematically explore the constraints on more model parameters than previously possible (for example black-hole angular momentum). Moreover, axial symmetry of the disk intrinsic emissivity is not assumed, although it can be imposed to speed up the computations. The new routines can be used also as a stand-alone and flexible code with the capability of handling time-resolved spectra in the regime of strong gravity. We have used the new code to analyse the mean X-ray spectrum from the long XMM--Newton 2001 campaign of the Seyfert 1 galaxy MCG--6-30-15. Consistent with previous findings, we obtained a good fit to the broad Fe K line profile for a radial line intrinsic emissivity law in the disk which is not a simple power law, and for near maximal value of black hole angular momentum. However, equally good fits can be obtained also for small values of the black hole angular momentum. The code has been developed with the aim of allowing precise modelling of relativistic effects. Although we find that current data cannot constrain the parameters of black-hole/accretion disk system well, the approach allows, for a given source or situation, detailed investigations of what features of the data future studies should be focused on in order to achieve the goal of uniquely isolating the parameters of such systems.