Next-generation Accretion Disk Reflection Model: High-density Plasma Effects

Abstract

Luminous accretion disks around black holes are expected to have densities of ∼1015−1022 cm−3, which are high enough that plasma physics effects become important. Many of these effects have been traditionally neglected in the calculation of atomic parameters, and therefore in photoionization models and ultimately also in X-ray reflection models. In this paper, we describe updates to the atomic rates used by the xstar code, which is in turn part of the xillver disk reflection model. We discuss the effect of adding necessary high-density corrections into the xillver code. Specifically, we find that the change of recombination rates plays an important role, dominating the differences between model versions. With synthetic spectra, we show that, even in a highly ionized state, high-density slabs can produce strong iron (∼6.5–9 keV) and oxygen (∼0.6–0.8 keV) resonance features. The significant iron emission could address the problem of the supersolar iron abundances found in some sources.