Recently, Narayan & Raymond (1999) proposed that the thermal emission lines
from the hot plasma in advection dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) are
potentially observable with the next generation of X-ray observatories, with
which the physical properties of some X-ray sources can be probed. In ADAFs,
the temperature of the ion is so high that the thermal broadening of the line
is important. We calculate the profiles of thermal line emission from ADAFs, in
which both the thermal and Doppler broadening have been considered. It is found
that the double-peaked profiles are present for high inclination angles between
the axis of disk and the line of sight. The double-peaked profiles are smeared
in low inclination cases, and completely disappear while the inclination angle
is less than 15∘, where the thermal and turbulent broadening dominated
on the line profiles. We also note that the thermal line profile is affected by
the location of the transition radius of ADAF. The self-similar
height-integrated disk structure and the emissivity with power-law dependence
of radius are adopted in our calculations. The results obtained in this work
can be used as a diagnosis on the future X-ray observations of the thermal
lines. Some important physical quantities of ADAFs could be inferred from
future thermal line observations.Comment: 7 page