On the X-ray heated skin of accretion disks

Abstract

We present a simple analytical formula for the Thomson depth of the X-ray heated skin of accretion disks valid at any radius and for a broad range of spectral indices of the incident X-rays, accretion rates and black hole masses. We expect that this formula may find useful applications in studies of geometry of the inner part of accretion flows around compact objects, and in several other astrophysically important problems, such as the recently observed X-ray ``Baldwin'' effect (i.e., monotonic decrease of Fe line's equivalent width with the X-ray luminosity of AGN), the problem of missing Lyman edge in AGN, and line and continuum variability studies in accretion disks around compact objects. We compute the reflected X-ray spectra for several representative cases and show that for hard X-ray spectra and large ionizing fluxes the skin represents a perfect mirror that does not produce any Fe lines or absorption features. At the same time, for soft X-ray spectra or small ionizing fluxes, the skin produces very strong ionized absorption edge and highly ionized Fe lines that should be observable in the reflected spectra.