Observing the strong gravity regime of accreting black holes with Simbol-X

Abstract

The X-ray reflection features of irradiated accretion disks around black holes enable us to probe the effects of strong gravity. We investigate to which precision the reflection signs, i.e. the iron K-line and the Comptonized hump, can be observed with Simbol-X for nearby Seyfert galaxies. The simulations presented include accurate computations of the local reprocessed spectra and modifications due to general relativistic effects in the vicinity of the black hole. We discuss the impact of global black hole parameters and of the irradiation pattern of the disk on the resulting spectra as they will be detected by the Simbol-X mission.

Proceedings of the international workshop "Simbol-X: the hard X-ray universe in focus" held 14-16 May 2007 in Bologna, Italy