McNair Summer Research Program
Faculty Mentor(s)
Theodore Dezen
Publication Date
8-2025
Disciplines
Astrophysics and Astronomy | Physics
Description, Abstract, or Artist's Statement
As matter falls closer toward the center of the accretion disk it loses gravitational potential energy, part of which becomes radiation primarily in X-ray wavelengths. Accretion disk models often invoked to fit observed spectra predict relativistically smeared absorption features that are not present in data from black hole X-ray systems such as GX 339-4 and LMC-X3. Informed by recent local and global simulations, we conduct new disk structure and radiative transfer calculations with increased dissipation rates of gravitational potential energy into thermal energy in disk upper layers. We find a noticeable reduction of the absorption features compared to older models that did not incorporate simulation-based dissipation physics.