Relativistic Accretion Disk Models of High State Black Hole X-ray Binary Spectra

Abstract

We present calculations of non-LTE, relativistic accretion disk models applicable to the high/soft state of black hole X-ray binaries. We include the effects of thermal Comptonization and bound-free and free-free opacities of all abundant ion species. We present spectra calculated for a variety of accretion rates, black hole spin parameters, disk inclinations, and stress prescriptions. We also consider nonzero inner torques on the disk, and explore different vertical dissipation profiles, including some which are motivated by recent radiation MHD simulations of magnetorotational turbulence. Bound-free metal opacity generally produces significantly less spectral hardening than previous models which only considered Compton scattering and free-free opacity. It also tends to keep the effective photosphere near the surface, resulting in spectra which are remarkably independent of the stress prescription and vertical dissipation profile, provided little dissipation occurs above the effective photosphere. We provide detailed comparisons between our models and the widely used multicolor disk model. Frequency dependent discrepancies exist that may affect the parameters of other spectral components when this simpler disk model is used to fit modern X-ray data. For a given source, our models predict that the luminosity in the high/soft state should approximately scale with the fourth power of the empirically inferred maximum temperature, but with a slight hardening at high luminosities. This is in good agreement with observations. (abridged)