Studying the Properties of Accretion Disks and Coronae in Black Hole X-ray Binaries with Monte-Carlo Simulations

Abstract

Understanding the properties of the hot corona is important for studying the accretion disks in black hole X-ray binary systems. Using the Monte-Carlo technique to simulate the inverse Compton scattering between photons emitted from the cold disk and electrons in the hot corona, we have produced two table models in the $XSPEC$ format for the spherical corona case and the disk-like (slab) corona case. All parameters in our table models are physical properties of the system and can be derived from data fitting directly. Applying the models to broad-band spectra of the black hole candidate XTE J2012+381 observed with BeppoSAX, we estimated the size of the corona and the inner radius of the disk. The size of the corona in this system is several tens of gravitational radius, and the substantial increase of the inner disk radius during the transit from hard-state to soft-state is not found.