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R. Sivron (Bucknell University), S. Tsuruta (Montana State University)
Recent observation by the Chandra observatory suggest that some relatively cold material surrounding the active galactic nuclei (AGN) moves at nearly relativistic speeds. These results suggests that general relativistic effects as well as Doppler shifts should be taken into account when considering the spectra from AGN.
A combination of general relativistic and Doppler effects on the spectrum emerging from a black hole vicinity was considered for a geometrically thin disk, but not for other distributions, such as infalling or outflowing clumps of matter. New theoretical considerations require that such clumps of matter, usually referred to as clouds, should be considered. We show how to obtain the spectra from relativistic clouds. We also show that gravitational redshift, gravitational lensing, and Doppler shifts all significantly alter the spectrum.
For semi-transperant clouds our results are consistent with some of the current Chandra observations, but better spectroscopic resolution around the Fe Ka lines are needed in order to differentiate between the clouds and disk models.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: rsivron@bucknell.edu