PIRSA:19010070

Heating of the compact X-ray corona in Seyfert Galaxies

APA

Yuan, Y. (2019). Heating of the compact X-ray corona in Seyfert Galaxies. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/19010070

MLA

Yuan, Yajie. Heating of the compact X-ray corona in Seyfert Galaxies. Perimeter Institute, Jan. 17, 2019, https://pirsa.org/19010070

BibTex

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:19010070,
            doi = {10.48660/19010070},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/19010070},
            author = {Yuan, Yajie},
            keywords = {Strong Gravity},
            language = {en},
            title = {Heating of the compact X-ray corona in Seyfert Galaxies},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2019},
            month = {jan},
            note = {PIRSA:19010070 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }
          

Yajie Yuan Princeton University

Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

There is observational evidence that the X-ray continuum source that creates the broad fluorescent emission lines in some Seyfert Galaxies may be compact and located at a few gravitational radii above the black hole. We consider two scenarios for the X-ray emission. The first possibility is that the X-rays may be produced by particles accelerated in an electrostatic gap at the base of a putative jet. However, our detailed study of the gap kinetic physics and scaling suggests that the energetics is not enough in these environments. The second possibility is that the compact X-ray emitting source may be powered by small scale flux tubes near the black hole that are attached to the orbiting accretion disk. Our force-free simulations show that the field linking the black hole and the disk can get twisted up by the differential rotation to form a magnetic tower. When the confinement provided by the field from the outer disk is strong, the built-up magnetic tower can quickly become kink unstable, which leads to continuous reconnection and dissipates most of the energy extracted from the rotating black hole. This could in principle power a hot X-ray emitting region above the black hole.