Phil Uttley (Amsterdam) - Reverberation mapping

Recent breakthroughs have allowed us for the first time to measure the time-delay signature
of 'X-ray reverberation' in AGN and black hole X-ray binaries, which can be used to infer the
light-travel distance from the continuum emitting region to the accretion disc, where the Xrays
are reprocessed into thermal and reflection signatures. LOFT, with its extremely high
throughput and good spectral resolution, will make reverberation mapping of accreting
compact objects routine and open up a whole new domain of X-ray spectral-timing analysis,
allowing us to measure disk radii in km rather than R/M. I will discuss the basic concepts of
reverberation mapping and show how we can use the measured time lags from LOFT to map
the emitting regions close to the event horizons of black holes and the surfaces of neutron
stars.