Composite profile of the Fe K$\alpha$ spectral line emitted from a binary system of supermassive black holes

Abstract

We used a model of a relativistic accretion disk around a supermassive black hole (SMBH), based on ray-tracing method in the Kerr metric, to study the variations of the composite Fe K$\alpha$ line emitted from two accretion disks around SMBHs in a binary system. We assumed that the orbit of such a binary is approximately Keplerian, and simulated the composite line shapes for different orbital elements, accretion disk parameters and mass ratios of the components. The obtained results show that, if observed in the spectra of some SMBH binaries during their different orbital phases, such composite Fe K$\alpha$ line profiles could be used to constrain the orbits and several properties of such SMBH binaries.