# The Physics of Hybrid Thermal/Non-Thermal Plasmas

## 1. Introduction

Most attempts at modeling the emission from accreting black hole systems typically assume that the particle energy distribution responsible for the emission is either purely “thermal” (i.e., a Maxwellian) or purely “non-thermal” (i.e., a power law). This is partly due to the desire for convenience and simplicity, and partly due to our continued ignorance as to when and how non-thermal particles exchange energy and thermalize with neighboring particles. Despite our ignorance, however, the reality is that Nature probably never makes particle distributions that are strictly of one type or the other. As a concrete example which may be very relevant to the process of black hole accretion, consider solar flares. (Many analogies have been made between magnetic reconnection and flare events in the solar corona, and those that might occur in accretion disk coronae, e.g., Galeev, Rosner, & Vaiana 1979.) The WATCH instrument on the GRANAT satellite has recently collected a large sample of flare events observed at energies above $`10`$ keV (Crosby et al. 1998). Many of those observations were made in coincidence with the GOES satellite which measures solar flare at lower $``$ keV. While the GOES observations usually can be adequately interpreted in terms of purely thermal emission, in many instances WATCH sees a significant high-energy excess over the emission predicted from the GOES spectral model. In other words, many solar flare events are produced by particle distributions with not only a strong thermal component, but also a significant non-thermal tail: the emitting plasma is a “hybrid” thermal/non-thermal plasma. If the solar corona-accretion disk corona analogy is correct, then something similar may well occur near black holes and could have important consequences for black hole emission models.

The goals of this contribution are to review the arguments for and against the existence of similar particle distributions in the context of accreting black hole systems, to see what the practical consequences of having a hybrid plasma might be, and then finally to ask whether we have any concrete concrete evidence that such plasmas play a role in the observed emission. In §2 below, I examine the theoretical arguments for and against having a purely thermal electron distribution in a black hole accretion disk corona. In §3, I examine some of the consequences of having a hybrid plasma and present model spectra calculated assuming varying amounts of thermal heating and non-thermal acceleration power are supplied to the plasma. In §4, I argue that we may already have strong evidence for hybrid plasmas in the spectra of Galactic Black Hole Candidates, especially in spectra obtained during their soft state. I show how a simple phenomenological model based on a hybrid plasma can explain the spectra of Cyg X-1 in its soft, hard, and transitional states in terms of one basic parameter, a critical radius outside of which the accretion disk is a cold Sunyaev-Shakura (1973) disk, and inside of which the disk is a hot, ADAF-like (Narayan & Yi 1995) corona. I summarize my conclusions concerning the importance and relevance of hybrid plasmas in §5.

## 2. The Electron Energy Distribution: Maxwellian or Not?

Consider a relativistic electron that finds itself in the middle of a low-temperature, thermal bath of background electrons. Will the electron couple to the thermal electrons and share its energy with them before it does something else interesting, e.g., radiate its energy away? If it does, then it is valid to treat that electron and its energy as belonging to the thermal pool of electrons. Before anything else happens, the electron will have exchanged its energy many times with other electrons, which is the requirement for setting up a Maxwellian (“thermal”) energy distribution. Hence, when considering processes that occur on time scales longer than this “thermalization” (energy exchange) time scale, one is justified in assuming that the electron energy distribution at energy $`\gamma m_ec^2`$ is indeed described by a relativistic Maxwellian, $`N(\gamma )\gamma ^2\beta \mathrm{exp}(\gamma m_ec^2/kT_e)`$, where $`\beta `$ is the electron velocity, and $`T_e`$ is the temperature of the thermal bath electrons. If it does not, then for practical purposes, e.g., when computing the emitted radiation spectrum, that electron is decoupled from the thermal distribution. Assuming that the distribution at this energy is a Maxwellian could be quite dangerous. The question of whether a plasma is best described as thermal or “hybrid” (thermal with a significant non-Maxwellian component) thus comes down to how rapid the thermalization process is for energetic electrons.

Unfortunately, the details of thermalization and energy exchange in plasmas are in general poorly understood. Witness the current controversy (see the contribution of Quataert, these proceedings) on whether accretion disks can support proton and electron energy distributions with different temperatures (one of the key assumptions behind ADAF disk models, e.g., Narayan & Yi 1995). We know of at least one process that will exchange energy between protons and electrons (and similarly between electrons and electrons), namely Coulomb collisions/scatterings where one particle is deflected by the electric field of the other particle. Under the conditions supposed to exist in an ADAF (Advection Dominated Accretion Flow), the rate of energy transfer due to Coulomb collision is not rapid enough and if no other process intervenes, the electrons will lose most of their energy before sharing it with the protons, i.e., the protons and electron distributions will not have the same temperature. But might another energy exchange process be important? Possibly. The electromagnetic force is a long-range one, and plasmas have so-called “collective modes” (involving the coherent interactions of many particles rather than the simple interaction between two particles that occurs in a Coulomb scattering). Under certain conditions, these modes can efficiently couple electrons and/or protons of different energies even when Coulomb scattering (“two body relaxation”) is not important. For an astrophysical example of such collective effects applied to the proton-electron coupling problem, see Begelman and Chiueh (1988). (See also Tajima & Shibata 1997 and references contained therein for a recent overview of collective and other processes in astrophysical plasmas.) In solar system plasmas observed directly by spacecraft, we know that some effect like this must be operating since quasi-Maxwellian electron energy distributions are observed even though the Coulomb energy exchange time scales are enormous (since the plasma densities are so low). Similar processes might well be operating in a black hole accretion disk or in a corona above the disk. However, realistic calculations of collective processes are notoriously difficult from first principles, especially near an accreting black hole where we still have a relatively poor understanding of the exact physical conditions. Besides collective processes, we note one other way for electrons to exchange energy, namely via the photon field. If the source is optically thick to photons emitted by an electron, the absorption of those photons by different electrons will effectively transfer energy between the electrons and produce a quasi-Maxwellian distribution. This is the basic principle behind the “synchrotron boiler” of Ghisellini, Guilbert, & Svensson (1988) (see also Ghisellini, Haardt, & Svensson 1998; Svensson, these proceedings), which can lead to hot, quasi-thermal electrons distributions. 

If a thermal electron distribution near a black hole can be maintained only by Coulomb collisions, however, we run into a situation similar to that of the inadequate electron-proton coupling in ADAFs. In particular, the photon energy density near an efficiently accreting black hole is so high that energetic electrons cool very rapidly due to Compton scattering. To see this, let us make the standard first-order assumptions that the high-energy emission region near a black hole is roughly spherical with a characteristic radius or size $`R,`$ and that inside this region, the photon and particle distributions are uniform and isotropic. For simplicity, let us also assume that the characteristic energy of photons in the source is significantly less than $`m_ec^2`$ ($`m_e`$ is the electron mass, and $`c`$ is the speed of light) so that Klein-Nishina corrections are not important (which is roughly true for radio quiet AGN and Galactic Black Hole Candidate systems). In this case, the Compton cooling rate for an electron of Lorentz factor $`\gamma `$ is then roughly

$$\dot{\gamma }_{comp}\frac{4}{3}\frac{\gamma ^2}{m_ec^2}\sigma _TcU_{rad}$$

where $`\sigma _T`$ is the Thomson cross-section, and $`U_{rad}`$ is the characteristic radiation energy density inside the source. To estimate $`U_{rad},`$ we note that if the source is optically thin, emitted photons will escape the source on a time scale $`R/c,`$ the characteristic source light-crossing time. The total luminosity of the source is then

$$L_{rad}(\mathrm{Source}\mathrm{Volume})\times U_{rad}\times (c/R),$$

which, for a spherical source, gives us

$$U_{rad}\frac{3}{4\pi R^2c}L_{rad}.$$

A convenient way to work with the source luminosity is to re-express it in terms of the dimensionless “compactness” parameter,

$$l_{rad}\frac{L_{rad}}{R}\frac{\sigma _T}{m_ec^3}.$$

In terms of this parameter, the cooling rate is then simply

$$\dot{\gamma }_{Comp}\frac{1}{\pi }\gamma ^2l_{rad}\left(\frac{R}{c}\right)^1,$$

which gives a characteristic Compton cooling time

$$t_{cool}(\gamma )\frac{\gamma }{|\dot{\gamma }_{Comp}|}\pi \gamma ^1l_{rad}^1\left(\frac{R}{c}\right).$$

Using the total source luminosity and a lower limit on source size from variability consideration ($`R/c>\mathrm{\Delta }T_{min}`$), many accreting black hole systems are inferred to have compactnesses $`l_{rad}`$ significantly greater than one (e.g., see Done & Fabian 1989 for a compilation of AGN compactnesses; for the Galactic black hole candidate, Cyg X-1, the best fit compactness seems to be $`l_{rad}1030`$, e.g., see §4 below). In other words, one does not have to go to a very high Lorentz factor before $`t_{cool}R/c,`$ i.e., before Compton cooling becomes very rapid. Note that if the source is optically thick, then the time it takes photons to leave the source is longer, $`U_{rad}`$ is correspondingly higher, and the Compton cooling time for an energetic electron is even shorter.

To see if this rapid cooling inhibits electron thermalization, we must compare this cooling time scale with the corresponding time scale for an energetic electron to transfer its energy to a thermal bath of lower energy electrons via Coulomb collisions. For purposes of making a rough estimate, we will assume that the Lorentz factor of the electron is $`\gamma 1`$ and the thermal electrons are relatively cold ($`kT_em_ec^2`$). Then the Coulomb “cooling” rate of the energetic electron is simply given by (e.g., see discussion and references in §5 of Coppi & Blandford 1990, also Dermer & Liang 1989),

$$\dot{\gamma }_{Coul}\sigma _TcN_{Th}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda },$$

where $`N_{Th}`$ is the number density of thermal bath electrons and $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the usual Coulomb logarithm, a weak function of the plasma parameters with typical value $`1530`$ for accreting black hole sources. In terms of the characteristic Thomson (electron scattering) optical depth of the source, $`\tau _T=\sigma _TN_{Th}R,`$ this gives us a Coulomb energy exchange time scale

$$t_{exch}(\gamma )\frac{\gamma }{|\dot{\gamma }_{Coul}|}\frac{\gamma }{\tau _T\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }}(R/c),$$

which grows with increasing electron energy and eventually becomes longer than the Compton cooling time (which decreases with energy). Setting $`t_{exch}=t_{cool},`$ we obtain the Lorentz factor above which electrons cool before thermalizing:

$$\gamma _{th}\left(\pi \mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }\frac{\tau _T}{l_{rad}}\right)^{1/2}.$$

For typical values $`\tau _T1`$ and $`l_{rad}20`$ and $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }20,`$ we then have $`\gamma _{th}2,`$ i.e., if Coulomb collisions are the only energy exchange mechanism, thermalization very quickly becomes ineffective and maintaining a thermal, Maxwellian energy distribution with relativistic temperature $`kT_e>m_ec^2`$ is impossible. (See Ghisellini, Haardt, & Fabian 1993 for more discussion along these lines. They also point that $`t_{exch}`$ can significantly exceed the variability time scale $`R/c,`$ again calling into question validity of assuming a single temperature thermal distribution.) For significant compactnesses $`l_{rad}20,`$ note also that the synchrotron boiler mechanism is also quenched by the rapid Compton cooling (Coppi 1992) unless the source is strongly magnetically dominated, i.e., the magnetic energy density $`U_BU_{rad}`$. This condition might hold if the particle acceleration is due to magnetic flares in an active corona, but this is far from clear yet. If, as in Cyg X-1, we observe photons with energies $`>m_ec^2`$ (511 keV), one must then seriously consider the possibility that they are produced by electrons in the non-thermal tail of a non-relativistic quasi-Maxwellian distribution. One loophole in this argument is that if a plasma is very photon starved (e.g., see Zdziarski, Coppi & Lightman 1990), i.e., if the power supplied to the electrons is much larger than the power supplied to the background photon field, most of $`L_{rad}`$ will emerge at energies $`m_ec^2.`$ In this case, Klein-Nishina corrections can dramatically decrease the effectiveness of the Compton cooling and thermalization might be effective to much higher energies. The typical AGN and Galactic black hole systems known to date appear not to be so photon-starved, however. Remember also that the Compton cooling rate depends critically on the source luminosity. If the accretion disk radiates very inefficiently as in the ADAF model proposed for the Galactic center (and the black holes at the centers of some elliptical galaxies), then $`l_{rad}`$ can be quite small and thermalization can be correspondingly effective. For a more detailed discussion of the electron energy distribution in the context of ADAFs, see Mahadevan & Quataert (1997). They note that while the bulk of the electron population may thermalize (especially at low accretion rates), a significant non-thermal, high-energy tail is still likely to be present due to synchrotron cooling effects. Compressional heating effects may also significantly distort the shape of the electron distribution.

The preceding argument and the current lack of a thermalization mechanism that clearly operates faster than Coulomb collisions are not the only reasons to consider a “hybrid” electron energy distribution, where only the lower energy end is well-described by a Maxwellian. Observationally, for example, the electron energy distributions in solar system space plasmas are never exactly described by Maxwellians and often show significant non-thermal tails. In fact, they sometimes show an energy distribution with two (!) quasi-Maxwellian peaks at different energies, i.e., as if the energy exchange processes are effective only at coupling electrons of similar energy. Also, whenever we see dissipative events, such as solar flares or reconnection events in the Earth’s magnetotail or shocks in the solar wind, we often see direct evidence of significant particle acceleration accompanied by “non-thermal” emission. This particle acceleration, however, is almost never 100% efficient in the sense that all the dissipated power ends up in high energy (non-thermal) particles (e.g., see discussion in Zdziarski, Lightman, & Maciolek-Niedzwiecki 1993). Many theoretical particle acceleration models have an injection “problem” or condition, depending on one’s point of view, where only particles above some threshold momentum, for example, are accelerated to very high energies (e.g., see Benka & Holman 1994 for a simple model of hard X-ray bursts in solar flares, or Blandford & Eichler 1987 for a discussion in the context of shock acceleration theories). Only above some energy does the relevant acceleration time scale for a particle become significantly shorter than its corresponding thermalization/energy exchange time scale for that particle. Particles below this energy are tightly coupled and their acceleration simply results in bulk heating of the thermal plasma component – i.e., one creates a hot, hybrid plasma. In accreting black hole systems, the problem of determining exactly what electron energy distribution results from dissipation and acceleration is further complicated by the fact that radiative cooling can be strong and that the dissipation process is highly variable (e.g., the “steady state” spectrum of Cyg X-1 that one fits may really be the superposition of many shot-like events with time-varying spectra, e.g., as explicitly illustrated by Poutanen & Fabian in these proceedings). The most heroic effort to date in terms of incorporating a particle acceleration scenario into a time-dependent code and then actually computing a spectrum is probably that of Li, Kusunose, & Liang (1996). See the review by Li (these proceedings) for some of the more recent results obtained with this code as well as a detailed discussion of the particle acceleration problem. The physics incorporated into this code may ultimately turn out to be overly simple or simply not relevant (given our large ignorance in this problem), but the code nonetheless provides an explicit demonstration of how a “hybrid” energy distribution might arise. 

One final complication is that the dissipation rate and non-thermal acceleration efficiency may vary considerably inside the source (as observations by the Yokoh satellite have shown to indeed be the case for solar flares). If the source is only moderately optically thin ($`\tau _T1`$), escaping photons can traverse the source and sample several regions with different acceleration efficiencies. The effective electron distribution required to produce the observed emission will then be a spatial average over the source and may not be predictable by any (!) standard one-zone particle acceleration calculation. (The same is true if one averages the emission over time – the effective electron distribution is then some time average and depends critically on the variability properties of the dissipation regions.) The bottom line is that spectral modelers should not be surprised to find that their data requires a somewhat “strange” electron energy distribution. Given the increasing quality of data (uncertainties in 2-10 keV X-ray spectra are now down to the few percent level and are often dominated by systematics not statistics), it is frankly amazing that the simple models employed to date have worked as well as they have. (In the next section, though, I will show why this may not be quite as surprising as one might first think.)

## 3. The Consequences of a “Hybrid” Electron Distribution

Hybrid emission models have been considered for some time in the context of solar flares, e.g., see Benka & Holman (1994), and more recently Benz & Krucker (1999). As the relevant processes and parameters in these plasmas are quite different from those near accreting black holes (e.g., the ambient radiation energy density is much higher in the black hole case), I will not consider these models further here. To make the discussion more concrete, I will show results from one specific incarnation of a plasma model intended for black hole applications, namely a plasma code called eqpair (Coppi, Madejski, & Zdziarski 1999) that we have recently developed. The code is an extension of the code of Coppi (1992), which makes no intrinsic assumptions about the electron spectrum other than the lowest energy electrons are in a quasi-Maxwellian distribution.

In terms of the basic physics considered, the code is essentially the same as other codes that have been recently applied to study hybrid plasma emission: Zdziarski, Lightman, & Maciolek-Niedzwiecki (1993), Ghisellini, Haardt & Fabian (1993), Li, Kusunose, & Liang (1996), and Ghisellini, Haardt, & Svensson (1998). The source geometry assumed in these models is either a disk-corona (slab) geometry (Ghisellini, Haardt & Svensson model), or a spherical geometry (other models). Low energy (UV or X-ray) thermal photons from the accretion disk are assumed to be emitted uniformly inside the source region for the spherical models and enter from the base of the corona in the disk-corona model. The total luminosity of these “soft” photons is parameterized by a compactness parameter $`l_s`$ analogous to $`l_{rad}`$ (although remember that $`l_{rad}`$ is defined in terms of the total photon luminosity escaping the source). The spectrum of these soft photons is typically assumed to be a blackbody or disk blackbody (Mitsuda et al. 1984) with characteristic temperature $`T_{bb}.`$ The main practical difference of the two geometry assumptions is that spherical models do not show the strong “anisotropy break” (e.g., Stern et al. 1995) in the 2-10 keV region that the disk-corona models do. To date, strong evidence for such a break has not been seen.

In the Li et al. model, a turbulent wave spectrum is then specified and electrons from a cool background thermal plasma with Thomson optical depth $`\tau _p`$ are accelerated by the waves to form the non-thermal tail. The total luminosity supplied to the waves and eventually the electrons is specified by the compactness parameter $`l_h`$ ($`L_h\sigma _T/Rm_ec^3`$ where $`L_h`$ is the wave luminosity). In the other models, the exact acceleration and heating mechanism for the electrons is left unspecified. Rather, electrons and/or positrons are injected into the source with some fixed (non-thermal) energy spectrum $`Q(\gamma )`$ that does not need depend on conditions in the plasma. The typical assumptions are that $`Q(\gamma )`$ is either a power law extending from Lorentz factor $`\gamma _{min}12`$ to Lorentz factor $`\gamma _{max}31000,`$ a delta function at Lorentz factor $`\gamma _{inj}31000,`$ or an exponentially truncated power law at some energy $`\gamma _c31000.`$ The total luminosity supplied to the source via these injected non-thermal pairs is parameterized by a compactness parameter $`l_{nth}.`$ To mimic, for example, an acceleration mechanism with less than 100% non-thermal efficiency, additional power, parametrized by the compactness parameter $`l_{th},`$ is supplied to the electrons (or pairs) once they have thermalized. Background electrons which participate in the thermal pool may be present, and in eqpair, pair balance is not automatically assumed. (In electron-positron pair plasmas, pair balance means that the total pair annihilation rate in the plasma equals the pair creation rate and is the standard condition used to set the equilibrium density in the source, e.g., see the discussion in Svensson 1984.) Hot electrons and/or positrons are allowed to cool via Compton scattering, synchrotron radiation (so far included only in the Ghisellini et al. 1998 code, which, however, does not include pair processes), Coulomb energy exchange with colder thermal pairs, and bremsstrahlung emission. The energetic photons created by these processes either escape the source, produce pairs on lower energy photons, Compton scatter off more electrons, or are synchrotron self-absorbed. Pairs that are injected or created in the plasma annihilate away once they have cooled. Any “excess” electrons that were injected (without a positron partner) are assumed to be removed from the system once they thermalize, e.g., via reacceleration, so that no net particles are added to the system except via pair creation. In steady state, the escaping photon luminosity must equal the sum of the various input luminosities, i.e., $`l_{rad}=l_h+l_s`$ where for the codes with no acceleration prescription, $`l_h=l_{th}+l_{nth}.`$

To summarize then, the main parameters of a hybrid model like eqpair are: (i) $`l_h=l_{nth}+l_h,`$ (ii) $`l_s,`$ (iii) $`l_{nth}/l_{th},`$ (iv) the source radius $`R`$ (which enters into some of the rate coefficients and relates the compactness parameters to absolute source luminosities), (v) $`\tau _p,`$ the optical depth of the background electron-proton plasma, (vi) the characteristic soft photon energy as specified by $`T_{bb},`$ and (vii) the non-thermal electron/pair injection spectrum $`Q(\gamma ).`$ The usual spectral modeling parameters of Comptonization models, e.g., temperature of the electron distribution, $`T_e,`$ and the total Thomson scattering optical $`\tau _T,`$ are all computed self-consistently. The main advantages of eqpair over other the codes is that: (i) all the microphysics is treated self-consistently without significant approximations (in particular all Klein-Nishina corrections are included, which is crucial), and (ii) it is still fast enough to use for real data fitting (one model iteration takes $`515`$ sec on a 300 MHz Pentium II). The code has been ported to XSPEC and incorporates ionized Compton reflection (as in the pexriv XSPEC model) including smearing due to relativistic motion in the disk (as in the diskline XSPEC model). (Note that in the current version, the reflected radiation is assumed not to pass back through the emission region as it in fact might in a slab-like disk-corona geometry such as that of Haardt 1993.) The code will be available for general use once the description/user’s manual paper is (finally) submitted. One drawback of eqpair and the other codes (except for Ghisellini et al. 1998 who calculate the Compton upscattered spectrum from the corona by solving the radiative transfer equation in a slab geometry) is the use of an escape probability to handle the radiation transfer. This is a potentially serious limitation when the optical depth $`\tau _T1`$ and the electron temperature is high, $`>100`$ keV. However, as noted in Coppi (1992), the errors are typically less than the uncertainties introduced by our ignorance of the exact source geometry, e.g., are the soft photons actually emitted in the center of the corona or do they enter the corona from some outer, cool region of the disk (as in Poutanen, Krolik, & Ryde 1997)? Figure 7 below shows an explicit comparison of the eqpair output versus the output from a Monte Carlo simulation with three different soft photon injection scenarios. The optical depth in that calculation is low ($`\tau _T=0.1`$) but the temperature is rather high ($`kT_e=200`$ keV), and the agreement is quite reasonable. One final caveat on using eqpair to fit observed spectra is that the spectrum it produces is of course a steady-state one, while the real spectra that are being fit are typically time integrations over many flares.

To illustrate the effects of a hybrid electron distribution (or, equivalently, simultaneously accelerating non-thermal particles and heating thermal particles), let us first consider the transition from a purely “non-thermal” plasma ($`l_{th}=0`$) to a mainly thermal one with $`l_{th}l_{nth}`$. This is shown in Figure 1 where all plasma parameters are kept fixed except $`l_{th}.`$ The initial plasma configuration has $`l_{rad}=l_s+l_h=20,`$ which means that Compton cooling of pairs is strong and pair production of gamma-rays on X-rays is moderately important. (The compactness parameter not only measures the effectiveness of Compton cooling, but also the optical depth to photon-photon pair production in the source, e.g., see Guilbert, Fabian & Rees 1983.) Because the non-thermal electrons were “injected” with a fixed Lorentz factor $`\gamma _{inj}=10^3,`$ the cooled electron distribution should have been $`N(\gamma )\gamma ^2`$ which should have given a power law photon energy distribution with $`F_EE^{0.5}`$. The deviations from this power law are the result of photon-photon pair production which removes some of the highest energy photons and adds lower energy pairs to the electron distribution (see, e.g., Svensson 1987 for a discussion of how pair “cascading” transforms spectra). Also visible is a pair annihilation feature at $``$ 511 keV caused by the annihilation of cooled, essentially thermal pairs. Because Compton cooling is so rapid, the pairs do not annihilate or thermalize until they have already lost most of their energy. (The temperature of the cool, thermalized pairs is only $``$ 10 keV.) Hence, the annihilation feature is narrow and has the shape expected from the annihilation of pairs with a thermal distribution.

Note an interesting effect. The initially non-thermal plasma has, in fact, already turned itself into a hybrid thermal/non-thermal plasma. Depending on the exact plasma parameters, Compton upscattering of the soft photons by the thermal component can be quite important and will produce a soft X-ray excess (see Zdziarski & Coppi 1991) without having to invoke any additional emission component. In Figure 1, we see this soft excess emerging and becoming increasingly visible as we increase $`l_{th}`$ and make the cooled thermalized pairs hotter. Note that as the soft X-ray excess increases, the pair production optical depth for gamma-rays increases correspondingly, and the flux above 511 keV drops. Eventually as we keep increasing $`l_{th},`$ by about $`l_{th}=50`$ or $`l_{th}/l_{nth}=5,`$ the soft “excess” is no longer really an excess but in fact dominates the entire X-ray spectrum. The spectrum then is essentially that of a thermal plasma except for a pronounced gamma-ray excess and a hint of a broad annihilation line above $``$ 100 keV. Note the behavior of the annihilation line. Even though the importance of pair production continually increases with $`l_{th}`$ and the annihilation flux is actually always growing, the annihilation feature eventually disappears as it is broadened and downscattered (e.g., see Maciolek-Niedzwiecki, Zdziarski, & Coppi 1995). By $`l_{th}=300,`$ the spectrum is very close to that expected from a purely thermal plasma – although a detector with sufficient sensitivity and energy resolution above $`500`$ keV would still find an excess relative to the purely thermal model since the hybrid gamma-ray does not fall off exponentially. This gamma-ray excess will be the key in understanding the effects of having a hybrid plasma in pair balance (see below). In sum, as Figure 1 shows, the most unambiguous signature of a hybrid plasma would be the presence of excess emission above $`>200`$ keV. Unfortunately, if the hybrid plasma is thermally dominated ($`l_{th}/l_{nth}1`$), hot, and moderately optically thick ($`\tau _T2`$ and $`T_e75`$ keV for the $`l_{th}=300`$ model), it becomes very hard to distinguish spectroscopically from a purely thermal one – except at the highest energies $`>500`$ keV. Any firm conclusions, for example, on the nature of the plasma in Cyg X-1’s hard state (which is likely to be thermally dominated, hot, and moderately optically thick) will have to await better detectors in this energy range like Astro-E and INTEGRAL, although we note that BATSE and COMPTEL may already have detected such an excess (see McConnell et al. 1994, and Ling et al. 1997).

The question of how much the details of the electron energy distribution matter is unfortunately somewhat more complicated than the preceding example would suggest. The real test seems to be whether or not multiple Compton scattering is important. In a typical thermal model with $`kT_em_ec^2,`$ the fractional energy shift per scattering is $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ/ϵ4kT_e/m_ec^21.`$ In order to cool the thermal electrons and boost the input photons to sufficiently high energies that the escaping photon luminosity equals the total input luminosity, a photon must scatter many times off the electrons before it escapes. This is particularly true if $`l_h/l_s1`$ and a significant energy boost is required to satisfy the energy conservation requirement $`l_{rad}=l_h+l_s`$. The final emergent spectrum in a thermal model is thus typically composed of many so-called “orders” of Compton scattering. (Each order of Compton scattering is calculated by computing the Compton scattered photon assuming the previous order as the input photon spectrum. The initial soft photon input spectrum is the zeroth order.) Since Compton scattering by hot electrons smears out spectral features (an input photon with a given initial energy can be scattered to a range of final energies), the spectrum of each successive Compton scattering order tends to appear smoother. The end result is that any spectral features in the first order of Compton scattering (e.g., due to the choice of electron energy distribution) tend to be washed out and the composite emergent spectrum is usually a rather featureless power law. As shown, e.g., in Rybicki & Lightman (1979), the slope of this power law can be derived by basically knowing only the mean photon energy change per scattering and the mean number of scatterings a photon undergoes before escaping (i.e., the Compton $`y`$ parameter). If one replaces the thermal electron distribution by another one that gives the same mean photon energy shift per scattering and also insures that the Thomson optical depth of the source remains constant, then to first order, nothing changes in the preceding chain of reasoning and the emergent spectrum will be the same(!). This was noted by Zdziarski, Coppi, & Lightman (1990) in the context of photon-starved plasmas and plasmas with very steep non-thermal injection ($`Q(\gamma )\gamma ^\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }>3`$) extending to a $`\gamma _{min}`$ close to unity, and by Ghisellini, Haardt, & Fabian (1993) who showed that the non-thermal Comptonization spectra produced in plasmas where $`Q(\gamma )`$ goes to zero for $`\gamma >\gamma _{max}24`$ are very close to thermal ones where the mean energy per scattering is the same. In other words, as long as most of the electrons in the source are low energy and multiple orders of Compton scattering are important, it makes little difference what energy distribution the electrons have. If non-thermal electron acceleration near the black hole holes is not very effective, i.e., if electrons never reach very high energies (perhaps because the radiative cooling times are so short), this might help explain why objects like Cyg X-1 have thermal-looking spectra in their hard state. It also explains why different hybrid plasma codes can use rather different criteria for deciding when exactly an electron has thermalized and still end up predicting similar emergent spectra.

As a further illustration of how spectra from different electron distributions can be quite similar if multiple scattering is important, we show in Figure 2 the spectra produced by a strictly thermal plasma, by a hybrid plasma where the non-thermal electron injection function is a delta function at $`\gamma _{inj}=3.6,`$ and by a hybrid plasma where $`\gamma _{inj}=1000.`$ For all three plasmas, $`l_h/l_s50,`$ i.e., the plasma is photon-starved and multiple scattering is important. The spectra from the thermal plasma and the hybrid, low $`\gamma _{inj}`$ plasma are rather similar (particularly in the 1-100 keV range), even though no effort was made to tune the non-thermal electron injection (e.g., as in Ghisellini, Haardt, & Fabian 1993) to match the mean photon energy change with that of the thermal plasma. The first key reason for this is that the equilibrium plasma parameters are determined by pair balance ($`\tau _p=0`$) and the fact that the electron-positron distribution responsible for the multiple Compton scattering is dominated by pairs created in the source, not the injected ones. If the input electron spectra are at all similar (i.e., have similar mean energies as is the case here), the different pair cascade generations initiated by these electrons tend to converge – leading to similar final electron distributions. The second reason is that when multiple scattering is important, the upscattered spectrum must pivot about/start from the peak energy of the injected soft photon spectrum and then will turn down once the photon energy is comparable to the maximum average energy of the scattering electrons. If the maximum energies of the pairs created in the source are at all similar, then simple energy conservation guarantees that the slopes of the Compton upscattered spectra will be correspondingly similar. For these reasons, the spectrum obtained in the hybrid plasma model with high energy non-thermal electron injection turns out to be amazingly similar (given the radically different injection spectrum) to the other two spectra. The agreement between cases only increases as the plasmas becomes more photon-starved.

While the overall spectra from hybrid plasmas can be quite similar to those from thermal plasmas, hybrid plasmas with pairs are also systematically different from thermal ones in that the larger the excess emission they have at gamma-ray energies (i.e., the higher the typical injection energy of the non-thermal electrons), the lower the characteristic equilibrium temperature of the cooled pairs in the source. (Note the clearly separated Comptonization and annihilation peaks in the dashed spectrum of Fig. 2.) This is because hybrid plasmas with an energetically insignificant high energy electron tail will still produce many more pairs for a given thermalized pair temperature than will a purely thermal plasma. The gamma-ray spectrum in a thermal plasma is a Wien spectrum and cuts off exponentially at photon energies $`>kT_e.`$ As noted above, however, the gamma-ray spectrum in a hybrid model may fall off much more slowly with energy. This means that while the “pair thermostat” of Svensson (1984) still operates in hybrid models (in general, for a given $`l_h/l_s,`$ the higher $`l_h`$ the higher the density of thermalized pairs and the lower their temperature), the exact plasma parameters it predicts depend critically on $`l_{nth}/l_{th}`$ and the non-thermal injection spectrum.

To demonstrate this last point, Figure 3 shows three plots analogous to fig. 2 of Ghisellini & Haardt (1994). Figure 3a represents exactly the same case as their fig. 2 and shows contours of constant 2–10 keV spectral index and plasma temperature plotted in the plane of $`l_h/l_s`$ versus $`l_h`$ for a purely thermal model (with no background plasma present). The two figures agree well given the differences in the microphysics (eqpair includes electron-electron bremsstrahlung cooling which is important at low compactnesses.) Figure 3b shows similar contours, but now the plasma model has a small non-thermal, high-energy ($`\gamma _{inj}=1000`$) component that receives only $`2\%`$ of the total power provided to the electrons and pairs. While the contours look rather similar in the photon-starved, high compactness region ($`l_h/l_s1,`$ $`ł_h1`$) for the reasons explained above, they behave rather differently in the rest of the diagram. Figure 3c shows what happens when $`l_{nth}/l_{th}=4`$ (the plasma is mainly non-thermal) but the injected electrons are low energy with $`\gamma _{inj}=3.6`$ (the case in our Fig. 2). From the shape of the contours, we see that such a model indeed behaves much more like a purely thermal model. However, there are still considerable differences, e.g., in the predicted spectral index, for $`l_h/l_s,l_h<10.`$ The lesson here is that while there always seems to be a rough one-to-one mapping between $`l_h/l_s`$ and the observed spectral index (higher $`l_h/l_s`$ gives harder spectra) and between $`l_h`$ and the thermal electron/pair temperature (higher $`l_h`$ gives lower temperatures), the details of the mapping are not robust. If one removes the constraint of pair balance by allowing a non-zero $`\tau _p,`$ the mapping changes even more. When the time comes to extract the physical plasma parameters from the observed spectra, the possibly hybrid nature of the plasma energy distribution can make a significant difference – even if the observed $`1200`$ keV spectrum appears consistent with pure thermal Comptonization. This having been said, figures of the type shown in Figure 3 and Ghisellini & Haardt (1994) should still be very useful. Given a particular set of assumptions about the plasma, they allow one to immediately zero in on the relevant model parameter space. In this regard, we also direct the reader to the contribution of Beloborodov (these proceedings) where some new analytic approximations for thermal Comptonization are presented.

We conclude this section by showing one final example of how only the mean fractional change in photon energy per scattering matters when multiple Compton scattering occurs. In Figure 4, we set the electron distribution equal to the sum of two Maxwellians, one with $`T_e^{lo}=10`$ keV and one with $`T_e^{hi}=100`$ keV. This might at first seem a silly choice, but it is not. Several authors (e.g., Liang 1991 and Moskalenko, Collman, and Schönfelder 1998) have attempted to explain the possible hard tail in Cyg X-1 via a multi-zone model where thermal electrons have significantly different temperatures. The idea is that Compton upscattering in the lower temperature zones explains the X-ray emission, while upscattering in the higher temperature zones explains the gamma-ray tail, i.e., that the observed spectrum is basically the sum of two thermal Comptonization spectra. While a sum of thermal Comptonization spectra may indeed match the observations, there is one potential physical problem with this interpretation. In the hard state of Cyg X-1, it appears that the total optical depth of the source is at best $`\tau _T12.`$ Thus photons are presumably free to scatter between the different thermal zones, and a uniform bi-Maxwellian electron distribution is not a bad first approximation to this case. What spectrum does one obtain in this case? As shown in Figure 4, while the overall spectrum does have an extended high enery tail, the overall spectrum is most closely approximated by a single thermal Comptonization spectrum with temperature $`T_e^{av}(T_e^{lo}+T_e^{hi})/2.`$ (This is the temperature of thermal plasma that gives roughly the same photon energy change as in the bi-Maxwellian case.) Adding together a 10 keV and a 100 keV Comptonization spectra in analogy with the way a multi-color disk black body is computed will give a very wrong answer in this case. Note also that a bi-Maxwellian plasma where one component is very hot has a nasty feature that may rule it out in the case of Galactic Black Hole Candidates like Cyg X-1. As we will discuss in more detail below, the fractional change in the energy of a scattered photon is not small if $`kT_em_ec^2.`$ This means the multiple Compton scattering approximation begins to break down, and one can see evidence of the first scattering order – in Figure 4, a $`0.10.3`$ keV deficit of photons relative to a low-energy extrapolation of the 2-10 keV power law.

In conclusion, we remark that if only one or two orders of scattering contribute significantly to the emergent spectrum (e.g., in a non-thermal model that is not photon-starved), then the shape of the spectrum is obviously extremely sensitive to the details of the underlying electron energy distribution. We do not have space to discuss the time-dependent behavior of hybrid models, e.g., low vs. high energy lags and leads, but any such behavior will clearly depend on whether the emergent spectrum is produced in the multiple or single Compton scattering regimes. In a one-zone model, if the spectrum is produced in one scattering (e.g., in non-thermal models), one expects no delay between different photons energies except perhaps for a slight soft lag due to the finite time it takes for electrons to cool and respond to changes in injection (which can be much shorter than $`R/c`$ and thus hard to observe). If multiple Compton scattering is instead important, one expects to see behavior similar to that seen in standard thermal Comptonization models, e.g., hard lags that increase logarithmically with energy.

## 4. An Application of a Hybrid Model to Galactic Black Hole Candidates

Until now, we have mainly discussed hybrid plasma models in a theoretical context. Is there any observational evidence that they may be important? In Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), the situation is still unclear. Radio-loud AGN probably have X-ray emission that is contaminated by strongly non-thermal emission from a jet, and they will not be considered here. (The jet environment in the emission region may be very different from that near the black hole.) For radio-quiet AGN, the composite Seyfert spectra compiled by OSSE (e.g., Gondek et al. 1996) favor a spectral cutoff at an energy $`300500`$ keV. An equally good fit to the composite spectrum is obtained using either a purely thermal model or a purely non-thermal model with either steep power law injection or a low $`\gamma _{max}`$ (maximum electron injection energy), i.e., the energy coverage and statistics of the composite spectra are not sufficient to distinguish between pure thermal, hybrid, or pure non-thermal models. It is also not clear, however, how representative the composite spectra are. For example, Matt (these proceedings) reports on a BeppoSax Seyfert sample that shows considerable variation in the cutoff energies, from $`70`$ keV in NGC 4151 to beyond $`200`$ keV in several objects. The strong break in NGC 4151 favors a purely thermal or hybrid model (e.g., Zdziarski, Lightman, & Maciolek-Niedzwiecki 1993), but fits to other individual objects are inconclusive.

The situation is potentially more interesting for Galactic Black Hole Candidates. Power law emission extending beyond $`511`$ keV has definitely been detected by OSSE during the “soft state” of these objects (e.g., Grove et al. 1998, Gierliński et al. 1999), and in objects like Cyg X-1, we have observed several spectral state transitions from the “soft” to the “hard” state and back (e.g., see Liang & Nolan 1984; Cui et al. 1997). Here, I will focus on Cyg X-1 as a test case since the object always seems to be bright, and hence considerable data has been collected on it. Figure 5, taken from Gierliński et al. 1999, shows a montage of spectra obtained during the soft, hard, and intermediate (transitional) states of Cyg X-1. Simultaneous, broad band data of this quality has had and will continue to have (as the instruments improve) an important impact on our understanding of this object. Until simultaneous 10-100 keV observations were available, for example, it was impossible to constrain the contribution to the overall spectrum from a Compton reflection component since the amplitude of this component depends critically on the hard tail ($`>100`$ keV) of the spectrum. Also, it was impossible to tell how the bolometric luminosity varied with the state of the source, and it was difficult to constrain the parameters of the Comptonizing cloud that was supposed to be responsible for the spectrum (at least in the hard state).

Using simultaneous Ginga-OSSE data, however, Gierliński et al. (1997) was able to show that the standard static disk-corona slab geometry was ruled out for Cyg X-1’s hard state because: (i) no “anisotropy break” was seen, (ii) the X-ray spectrum was very hard indicating that the source was photon-starved with $`l_h/l_s>1`$ (in the disk-corona geometry the soft reprocessed photon luminosity is comparable, i.e., $`l_hl_s`$), and (iii) the solid angle covered by the reflecting matter substantially less than $`2\pi ,`$ the value expected in the disk-corona where the corona extends uniformly over the disk. They suggested that a source geometry consistent with these would be one like that of Shapiro, Lightman, & Eardley (1976), with a central, hot source surrounded by a cool, thin accretion disk (e.g., see Fig. 9). Relying on a composite Cyg X-1 spectrum made of non-simultaneous data, Dove et al. (1997) came to a similar conclusion.

Hard state data of this type in combination with broad band data on the transition to the soft state also led to new suggestions for the overall accretion disk/corona geometry in Cyg X-1. The data of Zhang et al. (1997) showed that the bolometric luminosity in fact did not change significantly ($`<`$ factor two) during the recent hard-soft state transition. Because the luminosity of the blackbody component in the soft state was comparable to the hard photon luminosity in the hard state, and because a thermal Comptonization model for the hard tail required a low Compton $`y`$ parameter (a combination of low temperature and/or optical depth), Poutanen, Krolik, & Ryde (1997) proposed that the state transition was simply a change in the state of the accretion disk: the power dissipated in the corona dropped as the inner edge of the cool disk moved inwards, correspondingly increasing the soft photon luminosity. As the cool region of the disk spread inwards, the fraction of the coronal emission intercepted by the cool disk increased (e.g., as the disk penetrated into the coronal region), causing the observed increase in the relative amplitude of the Compton reflection component. Esin et al. (1998) proposed a rather similar model, where the inner radius of the cool disk is interpreted as the transition radius between the Sunyaev-Shakura disk solution and the ADAF solution. While the Poutanen, Krolik & Ryde model is more phenomenological and the discussion in Esin et al. is framed in the more physical context of ADAFs, both models are essentially the same, with the key free parameter controlling the “state” of the system being the location of the inner edge of the cool disk/the disk transition radius (something not currently well-understood). Both models also share the significant shortcoming that neither can simultaneously fit the low-energy (1–10 keV) and high-energy ($`>300`$ keV) data in the soft state. This has not been completely appreciated and is one of the strongest arguments for the presence of a hybrid plasma.

The reason both models fail is that they rely on purely thermal Comptonization to produce the observed spectrum. The X-ray spectrum above $`2`$ keV (e.g., in the RXTE data) appears to be a rather steep power law that joins smoothly onto the dominant blackbody component at $`1`$ keV (e.g., see Fig. 5). A Comptonization model fit to data below $`30`$ keV will give something like $`3040`$ keV as the best fit electron temperature in the model. At first sight, a low temperature like this is exactly what one wants since in the soft state, less energy is being dissipated in the corona and there are more soft photons to cool on. Unfortunately, such a low temperature also predicts an exponential cutoff in the upscattered spectrum starting at $`3kT_e100`$ keV. Such a cutoff is not seen in the OSSE data for the soft spectra of Galactic Black Hole Candidates, which in some cases clearly extend to at least 500 keV and above (see Grove et al. 1997, 1998). Recently Gierliński et al. (1999) has taken OSSE data for Cyg X-1 and tried to make as simultaneous fits as possible to lower energy ASCA and RXTE data. Figure 6 shows an example of joint RXTE-OSSE data that indicates no strong break out to $`200`$ keV.

In order to produce such a unbroken spectrum, the temperature of the Comptonizing electrons must be comparably high. We illustrate this in Figure 7, where we show the Comptonized spectrum from electrons with temperature 200 keV. At $`>10`$ keV, this spectrum has the right slope to match the soft state spectrum, and it starts cutting off exactly when the statistics of most detectors become very poor, i.e., it looks like an acceptable model. However, notice the large photon deficit at $``$ 1 keV (briefly mentioned above). The deficit occurs because the mean fractional energy change a blackbody photon undergoes in one scattering is $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ/ϵ4kT_e/m_ec^2.`$ For $`kT_e=200`$ keV, this exceeds unity and implies that one can begin to see the shapes of the individual Compton scattering orders, particularly the first one. (Approximating the blackbody soft photon distribution as a delta function at energy $`ϵ_{bb},`$ there are few upscattered photons between $`ϵ_{bb}`$ and $`2ϵ_{bb}`$ since $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ`$ is so large – hence we see a deficit.) Note the good agreement between the eqpair result and the Monte Carlo simulations shown there. (When making Comptonization calculations, especially using a kinetic code like eqpair, one has to be very careful not to create spurious features similar to this one by using an approximate Compton redistribution function that does not spread scattered photons sufficiently in energy.) Such a feature is real and generic to high temperature Comptonization models – and is strongly ruled out by data like that of Figure 6 at the many sigma level. (Remember, flux determinations in the keV range are now good down to the $``$ few percent level.) The discrepancy with purely thermal models is probably even greater because Gierliński et al. (1999) have averaged together several days of soft state OSSE data and find that any cutoff must be at energies $`>800`$ keV(!).

If the soft state is not the result of purely thermal Comptonization, what are the alternatives? First, one might interpret the lack of a $``$ keV deficit as implying the existence of “excess” emission. By superposing emission from two spatially distinct regions (or else one runs into the problems discussed in the previous section if photons can sample both regions), one can in principle reproduce the observed spectrum using a low temperature and a high temperature region. One then needs to explain, however, where the extra component comes from and why it has the temperature and optical depth it does. Another possibility that has recently been revived by Titarchuk and collaborators in the context of Galactic Black Hole Candidates is that of bulk Comptonization (e.g., see Blandford & Payne 1981, Colpi 1988, Shrader & Titarchuk 1998, Titarchuk & Zannias 1998; Psaltis & Lamb, in these proceedings). The rationale for invoking bulk Comptonization during the soft state is that the soft photon density appears to increase dramatically during the soft state, strongly cooling the coronal electrons responsible for the hard state emission. If there is quasi-spherical accretion near the black hole, then cold infalling coronal electrons could acquire substantial velocities $`vc,`$ and Comptonization using the large bulk inflow velocity of the electrons (as opposed to their assumed smaller thermal motions) could give rise to power law spectra like those observed in the soft state.

While elegant, this interpretation may also have significant problems fitting data, particularly in the case of Cyg X-1. One of the key difficulties is again how to produce unbroken power law emission well beyond 511 keV ($`m_ec^2`$). As a first order estimate of the location of the high energy break in the bulk Comptonization spectrum, Titarchuk, Mastichiadis, & Kylafis (1997) give $`ϵ\frac{4}{\dot{m}}m_ec^2,`$ where $`\dot{m}=\dot{M}c^2/L_{Edd}`$ is the mass accretion rate measured in units of the Eddington luminosity and the scattering electrons are assumed to be radially free-falling. However, to have a predicted X-ray spectral index in the observed range ($`\alpha _x1.51.8`$) apparently requires a very high mass accretion rate, $`\dot{m}>4`$ (Titarchuk & Zannias 1998). The first order estimate thus predicts a strong break in the Comptonized spectrum at energy $`ϵ<m_ec^2.`$ It is currently still not clear, though, how good this first order estimate is. As pointed out in Titarchuk, Mastichiadis, & Kylafis (1997), the second order terms in their equations tend to push their cutoff to higher energies. However, their treatment and essentially all other treatments until now have worked in the diffusion approximation and used the Thomson cross-section with a down-scattering correction instead of the full Klein-Nishina cross-section. As in the case of standard thermal Comptonization, when electron and photon energies exceed $`0.1m_ec^2,`$ the results obtained with these approximations become suspect. In particular, in the Klein-Nishina limit, Compton scatterings with the more energetic (higher velocity) electrons are reduced, and scattered photons tend to keep traveling along their original direction, e.g., into the black hole. In addition, even moderately relativistic electron velocities ($`v/c>0.3`$) will strongly collimate incoming radiation along the inflow direction. Gravitational redshift effects when infall velocities are $`v/c0.9`$ might further lower the break energy. I also note that the soft state temperature Esin et al. find for the central ADAF region is still $`40`$ keV, i.e., it is not that low at all. Standard thermal Comptonization effects may still dominate over bulk Comptonization ones, and at the very least, may cause a significant deviation from a power law spectrum. Although a better calculation is required for a definitive answer, right now it seems difficult to produce a spectrum beyond 511 keV ($`m_ec^2`$) via bulk Comptonization. How serious a problem is the low predicted break energy? In most Galactic Black Hole Candidates, the typical data above $`200`$ keV are not good enough to say anything. In Cyg X-1, however, we have a clear indication from OSSE data that the spectrum continues unbroken to at least $``$ 800 keV. Although the Cyg X-1 data is not quite as certain at energies higher than this due to possible source confusion, as noted above there is a strong indication that the spectrum continues to several MeV. If correct, this would seem to strongly rule out the bulk Comptonization hypothesis, for Cyg X-1 at least. Break energy aside, bulk Comptonization models have one other serious problem fitting Cyg X-1. Gierliński et al. (1999) finds that the ASCA/RXTE-OSSE data above $`10`$ keV is not well-fit by a power law and requires excess emission in the $`1030`$ keV range. Together with the presence of an apparent iron line and edge, this strongly suggests the presence of reflection with a covering factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }/2\pi 0.7,`$ i.e., half the hard X-ray flux hits a cool disk. Such a covering factor is natural in a corona-over-disk geometry, but it is not obvious how to arrange this in the bulk Comptonization scenario.

As discussed in Poutanen & Coppi (1998), an easy way to avoid all the problems mentioned is simply to allow the Comptonizing plasma to be a hybrid one, with a non-thermal tail. This introduces an extra parameter, the ratio of thermal heating to non-thermal acceleration power, but allows disk transition scenarios like those of Poutanen et al. and Esin et al. to go through largely unchanged. As shown by the solid curves in Figures 5 and 6, the hybrid model (eqpair) including Compton reflection and relativistic line smearing can fit the broad band data extremely well ($`\chi ^2`$ per d.o.f $`1`$) in all three states of Cyg X-1, including the “intermediate” transitional one. To see how far we could push the hybrid model, we also applied it to public RXTE data on GRS 1915+105 and also were able to obtain a good fit, e.g., see Figure 8 (although that data only extends to $`150`$ keV). We are not aware of another type of model that can currently do this. This is slightly surprising given the quality of the ASCA/RXTE data in the 1-20 keV range and may indicate that the crude assumptions made in the eqpair model (e.g., that the source is homogeneous, isotropic, and static) are true to first order. A detailed discussion of the model fits to Cyg X-1 and their physical implications (e.g., constraints on the importance of electron-positron pairs) can be found in Gierliński et al. (1999).

I conclude by showing results a simple phenomenological model which gives roughly the right fit parameters for the states (see Poutanen & Coppi 1998 for more details). The source geometry we envision is along the lines of that shown in Figure 9. The total power supplied to the disk and the hot coronal region

remains roughly constant during the state transition, i.e., $`L_{rad}=L_s+L_h`$ is constant. As in the Poutanen et al. and Esin et al. models, we assume a transition radius $`r_{tr}`$ which marks the boundary between a cool outer disk and a hotter inner disk/corona. We also assume that the sum of soft luminosity from the disk, $`L_s1/r_{tr}`$, and the thermal dissipation rate in the corona, $`L_{th}11/r_{tr}`$, remains approximately constant during transitions. In addition to thermal dissipation in the corona, we will assume a central source of non-thermal electrons with acceleration luminosity, $`L_{nth}`$. (Note that if the source turns out to have a relatively low compactness, the non-thermal acceleration could also occur in a more extended region that does not change size. One will obtain quite similar spectra to those shown here.) For simplicity, we take $`L_{nth}`$ to be constant (its value is not that well-constrained in the hard state). In the soft state, essentially all the power goes into accelerating non-thermal electrons. The density and temperature of the thermalized electrons/pairs responsible for the excess emission at $``$ a few keV are determined self-consistently. The results of the simulations are shown in Figure 10.

Although we have interpreted the state transition as a change in the location of the inner edge of the cool disk, note that this interpretation is in fact not unique. The arguments used in Gierliński et al. 1997 apply only to models where the corona is static, i.e., there is no bulk motion of coronal electrons. As discussed in Beloborodov (1999), this is rather unlikely given the strong radiation fields likely to be present and also given the highly dynamic, flaring nature of the emission. (The possibility of winds arising from the surface of disks has also been discussed for some time, e.g., see Narayan & Yi 1995, Blandford & Begelman 1998 in the context of ADAF-type solutions; and Woods et al. 1996 for a numerical calculation of X-ray heated winds and coronae from accretion disks.) When the electrons acquire even relatively small outflow velocities ($`v/c>0.2`$), this is enough to make their upscattered radiation significantly anisotropic (see Beloborodov 1999). Even if a cold disk extends all the way in to the last marginally stable orbit and is directly under the corona (e.g., the slab disk-corona geometry again), this anisotropy means that fewer hard photons reach the disk, i.e., the inferred covering fraction ($`\mathrm{\Omega }/2\pi `$) of the Compton reflecting material will be low. If most of the accretion power near the black hole is dissipated in the corona above the disk rather than inside the disk, then this also means the disk underneath the corona will be very cold and will emit few soft photons, i.e., the coronal plasma will be photon-starved. (This is in contrast to the static corona of Haardt & Maraschi 1993 where half the hard X-ray flux hits the corona and is reprocessed, implying a soft photon luminosity comparable to the hard photon luminosity.) In other words, if there is bulk motion in the corona, then there is no need to have a transition from a cool to a hot disk. Rather, we might have a transition from a cool to a cooler disk. In this case, the transition radius in our model is to be interpreted as the boundary between the region where most dissipation occurs inside the disk and the region where (for some reason) most dissipation occurs outside the disk, in the corona. As long as the coronal outflow velocities are not too large, the results are quite similar to those of the central hot sphere-disk geometry of Figure 9.

## 5. Summary

Most attempts at modeling the emission from accreting black hole systems have typically assumed the underlying particle energy distribution is either a Maxwellian (“thermal”) or a power law (“non-thermal”). While such an assumption may be convenient analytically, it is no longer required given the advent of powerful computers, and more importantly, it is does not appear to be well-justified. There are several examples in Nature, e.g., the phenomenon of solar flares, where it is clear the underlying distribution is neither a Maxwellian nor a power law, but rather a quasi-Maxwellian at low energies with a high-energy approximately power-law tail. This is exactly the type of particle energy distribution that is often predicted by theoretical particle heating/acceleration models. (The acceleration process typically kicks only a few particles in the high energy tail of the particle distribution to much higher energies.) Re-examining the process of electron thermalization under the physical conditions likely to be found near a black hole, we find that the likely thermalization time scales are likely to be quite long – unless some (unknown) collective plasma process is more effective than two-body Coulomb collisions at exchanging energy between electrons. In particular, because the radiation field is likely to be so intense near an accreting black hole, the Coulomb relaxation time for even moderately relativistic electrons may be much longer than the relevant cooling times. Depending on the exact plasma parameters, they may also be longer than the characteristic source variability time. Thus, the old arguments made against thermal models still stand. These arguments were largely brushed aside and forgotten when it became clear many of the classical non-thermal sources like NGC 4151 (an AGN that was supposed to have strong MeV emission) in fact showed strong cutoffs at $`100`$ keV energies and had spectra that could be successfully fit using purely thermal Comptonization models.

Now that we are seeing hints that the emission in Galactic Black Holes Candidates may indeed extend to much higher energies (albeit at much lower levels than previously thought), “hybrid” models involving both thermal particle heating and non-thermal particle acceleration are beginning to creep back. One of the strongest cases for the existence of a non-thermal particle distribution near black holes is the “soft’ spectral state of Galactic Black Hole Candidates. In this state, one sees very strong, quasi-blackbody emission at $``$ 1 keV, with a steep $``$ power law tail extending to at least $``$ 511 ($`m_ec^2`$) in several objects. Particularly in the case of Cyg X-1, such emission is very hard to explain either via pure thermal Comptonization or bulk Comptonization in the accretion flow. This has not been completely appreciated. Data from future missions with improved sensitivity in the $`500`$ keV - $`1`$ MeV range (e.g., INTEGRAL and Astro-E) should be conclusive. If we relax the assumption that the energy distribution of the Comptonizing electrons is a strict Maxwellian, then many problems go away. Using a newly developed, self-consistent hybrid plasma code, we show that the spectrum in the soft state (as well as in the other spectral states) can easily be modeled. With the proviso that there is always some small amount of non-thermal acceleration going on (compared to the total source luminosity), models that explain the Cyg X-1 state transitions in terms of a moving transition radius between cold and hot disk phases appear to work fairly well. (As Cui points out in these proceedings, however, these models only attempt to explain time-averaged spectra. What such a spectrum and the deductions one makes from such a spectrum have to do with reality is not yet clear, particularly if this time-averaged emission is the superposition of many individual flare events, e.g., as discussed here by Poutanen & Fabian as well as Mineshige & Negoro.)

If we follow theoretical prejudice and assume that particle energy distributions are indeed not completely thermal, then we must explain why so many black hole sources still manage to look so thermal. Clearly, one part of the answer must be that the efficiency with which power is channeled into relativistic electrons (Lorentz factors $`>10`$) is relatively low. Why this is so, depends on the unknown details of the acceleration mechanism. Another part of the answer, however, may have to do with Comptonization and pair plasma physics. If a source photon gains most of its energy in a single scattering event before escaping, then clearly the emergent radiation spectrum depends critically on the underlying scattering electron energy spectrum. However, if multiple Compton scattering is important, i.e., a photon gains its energy in several small steps before it escapes, then the exact details of the energy distribution turn out not to matter. To first order, if the scattering electrons have the same mean energy, be they thermal or non-thermal, then they tend to produce the same mean energy change in a scattered photon, which results in a spectrum with the same shape. (One can imagine doing a Fokker-Planck expansion of the relevant equations.) The details of the distribution typically only matter at the high-energy and low-energy tails of the output spectrum. The types of sources where multiple Compton is most important are those that are relatively photon-starved, i.e., where the power supplied to electrons is much larger than the power initially supplied to the low energy target photons. In this case, as long as the bulk of the heated/accelerated electrons do not have Lorentz factors $`>23,`$ it is largely irrelevant whether the electrons thermalize or not before they cool. (Note that if the source is very optically thick to gamma-ray pair production, and many generations of pair cascading are important, then the condition that most electrons have low Lorentz factors is automatically guaranteed – even if the accelerated electrons which initiate the cascading have high initial energies.) To model Cyg X-1 completely, for example, we may need a non-thermal power law source of energetic electrons. To match the data, however, the non-thermal acceleration must also produce a very steep power law in energy, i.e., most of the power resides in the lowest energy electrons. If we add such a particle distribution to, say, a hot background thermal plasma distribution, and then make the source photon starved, we will see virtually no difference in the final spectrum, except perhaps at the highest energies $`>200`$ keV. (For connoisseurs of pair plasmas, though, note that differences in the high energy photon spectrum can mean big differences in the pair balance and the pair thermostat.) It is probably no accident, then, that the photon-starved hard state of Galactic black holes looks so thermal, while the photon-rich soft state does not. In sum, whether we realize it or not, hybrid plasmas may be all around us!

## 6. Acknowledgments

I thank Juri Poutanen, Andrei Beloborodov, and Roland Svensson for organizing an excellent conference, for many useful discussions and hospitality in past, and most of all for their patience and help in getting this contribution out. I would also like to thank Marek Gierlinski and Andrzej Zdziarski for helpful discussions and allowing me to use their Monte Carlo Comptonization code. This work was supported in part by NASA grants NAG5-6691 and NAG5-7409.

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