Line shifts in accretion disks-the case of Fe K alpha

Abstract

Here we present a short overview and main results of our investigations of several effects which can induce shifts in the broad Fe K alpha line emitted from relativistic accretion disks around single and binary supermassive black holes. We used numerical simulations based on ray-tracing method in the Kerr metric to study the role of classical Doppler shift, special relativistic transverse Doppler shift and Doppler beaming, general relativistic gravitational red-shift, and perturbations of the disk emissivity in the formation of the observed Fe K alpha line profiles. Besides, we also investigated whether the observed line profiles from the binary systems of supermassive black holes could be affected by the Doppler shifts due to dynamics of such systems. The presented results demonstrate that all these effects could have a significant influence on the observed profiles of the broad Fe K alpha line emitted from relativistic accretion disks around single and binary supermassive black holes.