DISKSPEC: A Tool for Analyzing Observed Spectra of Accretion Disk Systems
Abstract
Accretion disks are ubiquitous in astronomy, associated with AGN, stellar mass black holes, X-ray binaries, progenitors of Ia supernovae, X-ray binaries, cataclysmic variables {CVs} {ordinary, recurrent, and dwarf novae, novalikes}, pre-main sequence stars. An understanding of the nature of, and physical processes in, accretion disks is one of the central themes in astrophysics. A large number of past, present, and future HST observational programs were/are/will be devoted to astronomical systems that harbor an accretion disk. We propose to develop a package DISKSPEC, which enables the user to generate a synthetic spectum of an accretion disk for essentially any combination of input parameters. The strategy is to use a sufficiently dense and extended grid of models for genericdisk rings, and to develop a code that computes a spectrum of the whole disk by interpolating the generic grid spectra to the actual spectra emergent from the individual radial rings of the disk, and integrates over the disk taking into account Doppler shifts due to disk rotation. We believe that the package will serve many researchers using new or archival HST data to be able to perform a spectroscopic analysis of objects that contain an accretion disk in a fast and flexible way, and thus contribute significantly to a better use of past, present, and future HST observations.
- Publication:
-
HST Proposal
- Pub Date:
- October 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013hst..prop13251H