Broad Iron Lines in Active Galactic Nuclei
Reynolds, C. S.; Kendziorra, E.; Wilmsn, J.
Germany, United Kingdom
Abstract
The Fe Kα lines seen in many Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are thought to originate close to the central supermassive black hole. In this review we summarize the physics of the fluorescent line formation and show that Fe Kα line profile observations can be used to probe relativistic effects in the vicinity of the black hole, concentrating on recent results from XMM-Newton.