The AGN Engine

The AGN Engine



Schematic of the innermost regions of a Seyfert galaxy consisting of a supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disk and molecular torus. The upper panel shows the iron Kalpha line which is produced in the innermost regions of the accretion disk, and its profile is distorted by extreme gravitational and kinematic effects. Determination of the profile using HTXS allows us to probe the immediate environment of the black hole. The lower panel shows a broad-band perspective. When the system is viewed face on (ie a Seyfert-1), ionized gas along the line-of-sight imprints absorption edges & emission lines on the intrinsic powerlaw continuum. The effects of such "warm absorbers" are only visible in the X-ray band, and the spectroscopic capabilities of HTXS will provide the detailed kinematic and plasma diagnostics necessary to determine its relationship to the accretion process. A hard tail is produced by Compton "reflection" of the intrinsic continuum within the disk & torus. The high sensitivity of HTXS, extending to high energies, provides an independent measure of the geometry and composition of these regions.


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