Relativistic reflection from accretion disks in Seyfert galaxies and black-hole binaries: black hole spin and geometrical parameters of the X-ray source and the disk

Abstract

In the last few decades, the development of observational techniques and the continuous improvement of measuring instruments have enabled a deeper understanding of the nature of compact objects. As a result of the systematisation of knowledge from numerous observational data, different classes of such objects, their different spectral states (soft, hard, transient), and the occurrence of various forms of accretion flows in their surroundings have been distinguished. The most advanced tool for studying the vicinity of strong gravitational fields is reflection spectroscopy. In this thesis, reflection models have been used to describe X-ray sources in a more physical way. In particular, the effects of finite extent, rotation and vertical motion of the source were considered. Section 2 contains a discussion of the first two effects and a new analysis of the size of the corona is presented, which can be accurately approximated by a point-like source, as is typically assumed in the lamp-post models. Section 3 presents the results of the application of the reflection model with an outflowing corona to the hard state observation of Cyg X-1 source by the Suzaku and NuSTAR telescopes. The aim of this analysis was to impose constraints on the parameters of the X-ray source and the accretion disk. In section 4, an extended corona model is considered for the 1H 0707–495 source. The results presented are for the full range of the XMM detector, i.e. 0.3-10 keV. The aim of this analysis was to impose constraints on the source parameters.