Effects of a cosmological constant on the X-ray fluorescence spectra of black hole accretion disks

Abstract

We investigate the effects of cosmological constant on the characteristic peaks in the iron line profile in the black hole accretion disk X-ray spectrum. Our results show that for a fixed mass black hole, the peaks become less pronounced and closer together with increasing cosmological constant. This effect is mainly due to the slower rotational velocity of Keplerian orbits at large radii in the Schwarzschild-de Sitter spacetime as compared to those for the Schwarzschild spacetime. This change of the iron line profile is similar to that obtained from increasing the outer radius of the accretion disk size or reducing the emission intensity power law exponent in the accretion disk emissivity models.