Observational analysis reveals diverse Fe xxvi doublet profiles, indicating wind density and kinematics in black holes.
Powerful ionized accretion disk winds are often observed during episodic outbursts in Galactic black hole transients. Among those X-ray absorbers, Fe xxvi doublet structure (Ly α 1 +Ly α 2 with ∼20 eV apart) has a unique potential to better probe the underlying physical nature of the wind, i.e., density and kinematics. We demonstrate, based on a physically motivated magnetic disk wind scenario of a stratified structure in density and velocity, that the doublet line profile can be effectively utilized as a diagnostic to measure wind density and associated velocity dispersion (due to thermal turbulence and/or dynamical shear motion in winds). Our simulated doublet spectra with postprocess radiative transfer calculations indicate that the profile can be (1) broad with a single peak for higher-velocity dispersion (≳5000 km s −1 ), (2) a standard shape with 1:2 canonical flux ratio for moderate dispersion (∼1000–5000 km s −1 ), or (3) double-peaked with its flux ratio approaching 1:1 for lower-velocity dispersion (≲1000 km s −1 ) in an optically thin regime, allowing various line shapes. Such a diversity in doublet profiles is indeed unambiguously seen in recent observations with XRISM/Resolve at microcalorimeter resolution. We show that some implications inferred from the model will help constrain the local wind physics where Fe xxvi is predominantly produced in a large-scale, stratified wind.
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Luminari et al. (2025) studied this question.
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