A New Interpretation for the Hot Corona in Active Galactic Nuclei
This work attempts to provide a new interpretation for the hot corona in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). A thin parabolic magnetic reconnection layer, anchored at the innermost disk and extending along the boundary of the magnetic tower for a few tens of gravitational radii, serves as a hard-X-ray so...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IOP Publishing
2025-01-01
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| Series: | The Astrophysical Journal |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ada35e |
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| Summary: | This work attempts to provide a new interpretation for the hot corona in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). A thin parabolic magnetic reconnection layer, anchored at the innermost disk and extending along the boundary of the magnetic tower for a few tens of gravitational radii, serves as a hard-X-ray source above the disk. Within this reconnection layer, the tearing instability leads to the formation of a chain of plasmoids, which contain relativistic electrons that generate X-ray radiation through inverse-Compton (IC) scattering of soft photons emitted by the accretion disk. Based on previous theoretical works and numerical simulations, we develop a heuristic framework to parameterize the geometry and magnetization of the reconnection layer, as well as to compute both the power of the IC-scattering radiation and the height of the reconnection layer. Our model allows for a quantitative investigation of the relation between the height of the corona and the X-ray radiation luminosity, which can be directly compared against the observed relation from X-ray reverberation mapping of individual AGNs. The theoretical results are in good agreement with the observations of IRAS 13224-3809, indicating the validation of our model. |
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| ISSN: | 1538-4357 |