Astron. Astrophys. 326, 885-896 (1997)

7. Concluding remarks

We are aware that the accretion disk model fitting performed leaves many open ends. I.e., contributions from other ingredients of the AGN phenomenon such as non-stationary processes in the disk, illumination of the disk, effects on the spectrum due to reflection and due to an absorbing torus have been neglected. However, the fact that in most cases acceptable fits of our accretion disk model were achieved has strengthend our belief that, for the objects selected, to first order this approach is justified. We thus have demonstrated that the `naked' (excluding the above modifications) accretion disk model is a viable, and in fact we think the most promising candidate, for understanding the soft X-ray excess and big blue bump emission in at least some classes of AGN (radio-quiet quasars and Seyfert I galaxies). Further modeling including some of the above ingredients will, however, be highly desirable, particularly when considering the availability before the end of the century of X-ray instruments with much improved sensitivity, spectral resolution, and spectral coverage.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1997

Online publication: April 8, 1998
helpdesk.link@springer.de