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"MoCA: a Monte Carlo code for Comptonization in/Users/vassilis/Desktop/tamporra.txt Astrophysics"
Dr F. Tamborra
Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, CNRS

When:  Wednesday 28 May 2014 at 2:00pm
Where: 2nd Floor Seminar Room

Abstract:

Up-scattering of low-energy photons by Inverse Compton processes in a hot gas of electrons (i.e. Comptonization) is a common astrophysical mechanism particularly important in accreting systems like X-ray binaries (XRBs) and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). It is believed to be the process responsible for the power-law spectrum observed in these sources at energies higher than a few hundred eV. Electron's scattering is one of the most common mechanism for producing linearly polarized radiation and the signal strongly depend on the optical thickness and geometry of the scattering medium as well as on the observer's viewing angle. Polarization degree and polarization angle represent two more observable which can be use to constraint some of the still unknown parameters which characterize the hot corona such as the geometry, the density and the thermal energy. In this talk I am going to present some results we obtained
with MoCA: a Monte Carlo code for Comptonization in Astrophysics which I developed during my PhD in the last years.

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