Relativistic effects on the observed AGN luminosity distribution

Abstract

Recently, Zhang (2005 ApJ, 618, L79) has proposed a model to account for the well-established effect that the fraction of type-II AGNs is anti-correlated with the observed X-ray luminosity; the model consists of an X-ray emitting accretion disk coaligned to the dusty torus within the standard AGN unification model. In this paper the model is refined by including relativistic effects of the observed X-ray radiation from the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in an AGN. The relativistic corrections improve the combined fitting results of the observed luminosity distribution and the type-II AGN fraction, though the improvement is not significant. The type-II AGN fraction prefers non- or mildly spinning black hole cases, and rules out the extremely spinning case. © 2007. Astronomical Society of Japan.