Black Hole Spin–orbit Misalignment in Galactic X-Ray Binaries

Fragos, Tassos; Tremmel, Michael; Rantsiou, Emmanouela; Belczyński, Krzysztof

doi:10.1088/2041-8205/719/1/l79

Cited by 91 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…• (Fragos et al 2010). In determining the spins of the remaining two black holes (see Section 6), the inclination of the inner disk is taken to be the inclination θ of the radio or X-ray jet axis, which is presumed to be aligned with the black hole's spin axis.…”

Section: Assumption Of Spin-orbit Alignmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets

2013

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The spins of ten stellar black holes have been measured using the continuumfitting method. These black holes are located in two distinct classes of X-ray binary systems, one that is persistently X-ray bright and another that is transient. Both the persistent and transient black holes remain for long periods in a state where their spectra are dominated by a thermal accretion disk component. The spin of a black hole of known mass and distance can be measured by fitting this thermal continuum spectrum to the thin-disk model of Novikov and Thorne; the key fit parameter is the radius of the inner edge of the black hole's accretion disk. Strong observational and theoretical evidence links the inner-disk radius to the radius of the innermost stable circular orbit, which is trivially related to the dimensionless spin parameter a * of the black hole (|a * | < 1). The ten spins that have so far been measured by this continuum-fitting method range widely from a * ≈ 0 to a * > 0.95. The robustness of the method is demonstrated by the dozens or hundreds of independent and consistent measurements of spin that have been obtained for several black holes, and through careful consideration of many sources of systematic error. Among the results discussed is a dichotomy between the transient and persistent black holes; the latter have higher spins and larger masses. Also discussed is recently discovered evidence in the transient sources for a correlation between the power of ballistic jets and black hole spin.

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Section: Assumption Of Spin-orbit Alignmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets

2013

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“…For long-term accretions, the disk is adjusted on the equatorial plane as a result of the Bardeen-Petterson effect (Bardeen & Petterson 1975) (such a mechanism works even in non-Kerr backgrounds (Bambi 2011a)). In the case of BH candidates in X-ray binaries, the disk is likely on the equatorial plane if the two bodies formed from the collapse of the same cloud (Fragos et al 2010). The assumption of nearly geodesic circular orbits requires that the radial pressure is negligible compared to the gravitational force of the BH, which is indeed the case for thin disks.…”

Section: Novikov-thorne Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing the space-time geometry around black hole candidates with the available radio and X-ray data

Bambi

2013

Astronomical Review

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Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, but the actual nature of these objects has still to be proven. The Kerr black hole hypothesis can be tested by observing strong gravity features and check if they are in agreement with the predictions of General Relativity. In particular, the study of the properties of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the gas of the accretion disk can provide information on the geometry of the space-time around these objects and constrain possible deviations from the Kerr background.

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“…LIGOʼs observations of merging binary BH systems yield weak constraints on component spins (Abbott et al 2016c. The microquasar XTE J1550-564 (Steiner & McClintock 2012) and population synthesis models (Fragos et al 2010) (Usman et al 2016;Messick et al 2016), although methods to extend this to generic spins are being explored ). Nevertheless, alignedspin searches have been shown to have good sensitivity to systems with generic spin orientations in O1 (Dal Canton et al 2015;Harry et al 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

Upper Limits on the Rates of Binary Neutron Star and Neutron Star–black Hole Mergers From Advanced Ligo’s First Observing Run

Abbott¹,

Abbott²,

Abbott³

et al. 2016

ApJL

156

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We report here the non-detection of gravitational waves from the merger of binary-neutron star systems and neutron star-black hole systems during the first observing run of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitationalwave Observatory (LIGO). In particular, we searched for gravitational-wave signals from binary-neutron star systems with component masses Î , and no restriction on the black hole spin magnitude. We assess the sensitivity of the two LIGO detectors to these systems and find that they could have detected the merger of binary-neutron star systems with component mass distributions of 1.35±0.13 M e at a volume-weighted average distance of ∼70 Mpc, and for neutron star-black hole systems with neutron star masses of 1.4 M e and black hole masses of at least 5 M e , a volume-weighted average distance of at least ∼110 Mpc. From this we constrain with 90% confidence the merger rate to be less than 12,600Gpc −3 yr −1 for binary-neutron star systems and less than 3600Gpc −3 yr −1 for neutron star-black hole systems. We discuss the astrophysical implications of these results, which we find to be in conflict with only the most optimistic predictions. However, we find that if no detection of neutron star-binary mergers is made in the next two Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo observing runs we would place significant constraints on the merger rates. Finally, assuming a rate of -+ 10 7 20 Gpc −3 yr −1 , short gamma-ray bursts beamed toward the Earth, and assuming that all short gamma-ray bursts have binary-neutron star (neutron star-black hole) progenitors, we can use our 90% confidence rate upper limits to constrain the beaming angle of the gamma-ray burst to be greater than  -+ 2 . 3 1.1 1.7 (  -+ 4 . 3 1.9 3.1 ).

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Black Hole Spin–orbit Misalignment in Galactic X-Ray Binaries

Cited by 91 publications

References 35 publications

Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets

Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets

Testing the space-time geometry around black hole candidates with the available radio and X-ray data

Upper Limits on the Rates of Binary Neutron Star and Neutron Star–black Hole Mergers From Advanced Ligo’s First Observing Run

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