RefleX: X-ray absorption and reflection in active galactic nuclei for arbitrary geometries. (arXiv:1906.08824v1 [astro-ph.HE])
<a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Paltani_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">Stéphane Paltani</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Ricci_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">Claudio Ricci</a>
Reprocessed X-ray radiation carries important information about the structure
and physical characteristics of the material surrounding the supermassive black
hole (SMBH) in active galactic nuclei (AGN). We report here on a newly
developed simulation platform, RefleX, which allows to reproduce absorption and
reflection by quasi-arbitrary geometries. We show here the reliability of our
approach by comparing the results of our simulations with existing spectral
models such as pexrav, MYTorus and BNTorus. RefleX implements both Compton
scattering on free electrons and Rayleigh scattering and Compton scattering on
bound electrons. We show the effect of bound-electron corrections on a torus
geometry simulated like in MYTorus. We release with this paper the RefleX
executable, as well as RXTorus, a model that assumes absorption and reflection
from a torus with a varying ratio of the minor to major axis of the torus. To
allow major flexibility RXTorus is also distributed in three components:
absorbed primary emission, scattered radiation and fluorescent lines. RXTorus
is provided for different values of the abundance, and with (atomic
configuration) or without (free-electron configuration) taking into account
Rayleigh scattering and bound electrons. We apply the RXTorus model in both
configurations on the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR spectrum of the Compton-thick AGN
NGC 424 and find that the models are able to reproduce very well the
observations, but that the assumption on the bound or free state of the
electrons has significant consequences on the fit parameters.
Reprocessed X-ray radiation carries important information about the structure
and physical characteristics of the material surrounding the supermassive black
hole (SMBH) in active galactic nuclei (AGN). We report here on a newly
developed simulation platform, RefleX, which allows to reproduce absorption and
reflection by quasi-arbitrary geometries. We show here the reliability of our
approach by comparing the results of our simulations with existing spectral
models such as pexrav, MYTorus and BNTorus. RefleX implements both Compton
scattering on free electrons and Rayleigh scattering and Compton scattering on
bound electrons. We show the effect of bound-electron corrections on a torus
geometry simulated like in MYTorus. We release with this paper the RefleX
executable, as well as RXTorus, a model that assumes absorption and reflection
from a torus with a varying ratio of the minor to major axis of the torus. To
allow major flexibility RXTorus is also distributed in three components:
absorbed primary emission, scattered radiation and fluorescent lines. RXTorus
is provided for different values of the abundance, and with (atomic
configuration) or without (free-electron configuration) taking into account
Rayleigh scattering and bound electrons. We apply the RXTorus model in both
configurations on the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR spectrum of the Compton-thick AGN
NGC 424 and find that the models are able to reproduce very well the
observations, but that the assumption on the bound or free state of the
electrons has significant consequences on the fit parameters.
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