The study of the circumnuclear environment of accreting supermassive black holes with realistic X-ray spectral models
Abstract
X-ray spectral modeling is a powerful tool for studying the immediate environment of accreting objects, including supermassive black holes. Several models, either phenomenological or physically driven, have been developed over the past decade to study X-ray spectra, delivering important insights into the properties of circumnuclear material of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Despite the fact that these models are able to reproduce the data well, they often lack realistic geometries, and most of them consist of simplified configurations such as a slab or a torus. We use the ray-tracing code \textsc{RefleX} to generate new spectral models that cover a wide energy range in the X-ray band, adopting a realistic configuration for the surrounding material. We introduce two new table models that are publicly available: 1) the RXToPo model, which features an X-ray source along with a dusty torus and a polar hollow cone; 2) the RXagn1 model, which includes, besides the torus and polar cone, also the accretion disk and the broad line region. Both models were applied to the X-ray spectrum of NGC 424, demonstrating their potential to study sources whose X-ray emission is dominated by reprocessed radiation.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{dimopoulos2026study,
title = {{The study of the circumnuclear environment of accreting supermassive black holes with realistic X-ray spectral models}},
author = {Georgios Dimopoulos and Claudio Ricci and Stéphane Paltani},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.06794},
eprint = {2605.06794},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06794},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The study of the circumnuclear environment of accreting supermassive black holes with realistic X-ray spectral models
AU - Georgios Dimopoulos
AU - Claudio Ricci
AU - Stéphane Paltani
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.06794
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06794
AB - X-ray spectral modeling is a powerful tool for studying the immediate environment of accreting objects, including supermassive black holes. Several models, either phenomenological or physically driven, have been developed over the past decade to study X-ray spectra, delivering important insights into the properties of circumnuclear material of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Despite the fact that these models are able to reproduce the data well, they often lack realistic geometries, and most of them consist of simplified configurations such as a slab or a torus. We use the ray-tracing code \textsc{RefleX} to generate new spectral models that cover a wide energy range in the X-ray band, adopting a realistic configuration for the surrounding material. We introduce two new table models that are publicly available: 1) the RXToPo model, which features an X-ray source along with a dusty torus and a polar hollow cone; 2) the RXagn1 model, which includes, besides the torus and polar cone, also the accretion disk and the broad line region. Both models were applied to the X-ray spectrum of NGC 424, demonstrating their potential to study sources whose X-ray emission is dominated by reprocessed radiation.
ER -