J/A+A/607/A31 RefleX : X-ray-tracing code (Paltani+, 2017)
RefleX: X-ray absorption and reflection in active galactic nuclei for
arbitrary geometries.
Paltani S., Ricci C.
<Astron. Astrophys. 607, A31 (2017)>
=2017A&A...607A..31P 2017A&A...607A..31P (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Models ; Active gal. nuclei ; Galaxies, Seyfert ; QSOs ;
X-ray sources
Keywords: X-rays: general - galaxies: nuclei - galaxies: Seyfert -
methods: numerical
Abstract:
Reprocessed X-ray radiation carries important information about the
structure and physical characteristics of the material surrounding the
supermassive black hole (SMBH) in active galactic nuclei (AGN). We
report here on a newly developed simulation platform, RefleX, which
allows to reproduce absorption and reflection by quasi-arbitrary
geometries. We show here the reliability of our approach by comparing
the results of our simulations with existing spectral models such as
pexrav, MYTorus and BNTorus. RefleX implements both Compton scattering
on free electrons and Rayleigh scattering and Compton scattering on
bound electrons. We show the effect of bound-electron corrections on a
torus geometry simulated like in MYTorus. We release with this paper
the RefleX executable, as well as RXTorus, a model that assumes
absorption and reflection from a torus with a varying ratio of the
minor to major axis of the torus. To allow major flexibility RXTorus
is also distributed in three components: absorbed primary emission,
scattered radiation and fluorescent lines. RXTorus is provided for
different values of the abundance, and with (atomic configuration) or
without (free-electron configuration) taking into account Rayleigh
scattering and bound electrons. We apply the RXTorus model in both
configurations on the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR spectrum of the
Compton-thick AGN NGC 424 and find that the models are able to
reproduce very well the observations, but that the assumption on the
bound or free state of the electrons has significant consequences on
the fit parameters.
Description:
We provide here the RefleX executable, for both Linux and MacOSX,
together with the User Manual and example script file and output file
Running (for instance):
reflex_linux
will produce the file reflex.out
Note that the results may differ slightly depending on the OS, because
of slight differences in some implementations numerical computations.
The difference are scientifically meaningless.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
reflex.out 30 4000 Sample RefleX output
reflex.par 76 22 Sample RefleX parameter file
reflex_linux 512 610 RefleX executable for Linux
reflex_macosx 512 537 RefleX executable for MacOSX
reflex_um.pdf 512 316 User manual for RefleX
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Acknowledgements:
Stephane Paltani, Stephane.Paltani(at)unige.ch
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 06-Nov-2017