CONSTRAINING THE SPIN OF THE BLACK HOLE IN FAIRALL 9 WITH<i>SUZAKU</i>

Schmoll, S.; Miller, J. M.; Volonteri, Marta; Cackett, E. M.; Reynolds, C. S.; Fabian, A. C.; Brenneman, Laura; Miniutti, G.; Gallo, Luigi

doi:10.1088/0004-637x/703/2/2171

Cited by 74 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In the first solution, the soft excess is described by an additional continuum component (modeled as thermal Comptonization from a moderately hot kT ∼ 20 keV plasma) and the relativistic disk reflection, driven by the modestly broad iron line, implies a modestly spinning black hole (a = 0.52 +0. 19 −0.15 , completely consistent with the previous analysis of Schmoll et al 2009). Interestingly, such a solution demands a very high iron abundance (Z Fe ∼ 10Z ⊙ ) which would drive one to consider somewhat exotic phenomena such as radiative-levitation to enhance the photospheric iron content of the inner disk ).…”

Section: Two Illustrative Case Studiessupporting

confidence: 91%

Measuring Black Hole Spin Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy

Reynolds¹

2013

The Physics of Accretion Onto Black Holes

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I review the current status of X-ray reflection (a.k.a. broad iron line) based black hole spin measurements. This is a powerful technique that allows us to measure robust black hole spins across the mass range, from the stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries to the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. After describing the basic assumptions of this approach, I lay out the detailed methodology focusing on "best practices" that have been found necessary to obtain robust results. Reflecting my own biases, this review is slanted towards a discussion of supermassive black hole (SMBH) spin in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Pulling together all of the available XMM-Newton and Suzaku results from the literature that satisfy objective quality control criteria, it is clear that a large fraction of SMBHs are rapidlyspinning, although there are tentative hints of a more slowly spinning population at high (M > 5 × 10 7 M ⊙ ) and low (M < 2 × 10 6 M ⊙ ) mass. I also engage in a brief review of the spins of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. In general, reflection-based and continuum-fitting based spin measures are in agreement, although there remain two objects (GRO J1655-40 and 4U 1543-475) for which that is not true. I end this review by discussing the exciting frontier of relativistic reverberation, particularly the discovery of broad iron line reverberation in XMM-Newton data for the Seyfert galaxies NGC 4151, NGC 7314 and MCG-5-23-16. As well as confirming the basic paradigm of relativistic disk reflection, this detection of reverberation demonstrates that future large-area X-ray observatories such as LOFT will make tremendous progress in studies of strong gravity using relativistic reverberation in AGN.

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Section: Two Illustrative Case Studiessupporting

confidence: 91%

Measuring Black Hole Spin Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy

Reynolds¹

2013

The Physics of Accretion Onto Black Holes

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“…The Gaussian line has a centroid energy of E Gaussian = 3.61 +0. 26 −0.24 keV (local frame) and a width of σ = 710 +370 −570 eV. It is clear that such a broad line, with a centroid energy much lower than the 6.4 keV expected for neutral iron is a rather unphysical combination which is artificially mimicking a broad, relativistic line.…”

Section: Phenomenological Modelingmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…2,4,5), reveal broad residual emission features both at low energies ( 2 keV rest frame, the "soft-excess") and around the iron K energies (3.5-7 keV rest frame), characteristic signatures of relativistic disk reflection [10,23]. To treat these residuals, we consider two template models based on those commonly used to fit the spectra of Seyferts [24,6] and stellar mass black hole binaries [25], and which have also at times been used to model local quasars [26]. The first is a simple phenomenological combination of a power-law, a soft-thermal disk and a relativistic Fe-line component (baseline-simple), and the second employs a self-consistent blurred-reflection model together with a power-law (baseline-reflection).…”

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confidence: 99%

Reflection from the strong gravity regime in a lensed quasar at redshift z = 0.658

Reis

Reynolds

Miller

et al. 2014

Nature

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The co-evolution of a supermassive black hole with its host galaxy[1] through cosmic time is encoded in its spin[2, 3, 4]. At z > 2, supermassive black holes are thought to grow mostly by merger-driven accretion leading to high spin. However, it is unknown whether below z ∼ 1 these black holes continue to grow via coherent accretion or in a chaotic manner [5], though clear differences are predicted [3,4] in their spin evolution. An established method[6] to measure the spin of black holes is via the study of relativistic reflection features [7] from the inner accretion disk. Owing to their greater distances, there has hitherto been no significant detection of relativistic reflection features in a moderateredshift quasar. Here, we use archival data together with a new, deep observation of a gravitationally-lensed quasar at z = 0.658 to rigorously detect and study reflection in this moderate-redshift quasar. The level of relativistic distortion present in this reflection spectrum enables us to constrain the emission to originate within 3 gravitational radii from the black hole, implying a spin parameter a = 0.87 +0.08 −0.15 at the 3σ level of confidence and a > 0.66 at the 5σ level. The high spin found here is indicative of growth via coherent accretion for this black hole, and suggests that black hole growth between 0.5 z 1 occurs principally by coherent rather than chaotic accretion episodes. 1When optically-thick material, e.g. an accretion disc, is irradiated by hard X-rays, some of the flux is reprocessed into an additional 'reflected' emission component, which contains both continuum emission and atomic features. The most prominent signature of reflection from the inner accretion disc is typically the relativistic iron Kα line (6.4-6.97 keV; rest frame) [8] and the Compton reflection hump [7] often peaking at 20 − 30 keV (rest-frame). However, the deep gravitational potential and strong Doppler shifts associated with regions around black holes will also cause the forest of soft X-ray emission lines in the ∼ 0.7 − 2.0 keV range to be blended into a smooth emission feature, providing a natural explanation for the "soft-excess" observed in the X-ray spectra of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs) [9,10]. Indeed, both the iron line and the soft excess can be used to provide insight into the nature of the central black hole and to measure its spin [10]. Prior studies have revealed the presence of a soft-excess in 90% of quasars at[11, 12] z 1.7, and broad Fe-lines are also seen in 25% of these objects [11,13], suggesting that reflection is also prevalent in these distant AGNs. However, due to the inadequate S/N resulting from their greater distances, the X-ray spectra of these quasars were necessarily modeled using simple phenomenological parameterizations [12,14].Gravitational lensing offers a rare opportunity to study the innermost relativistic region in distant quasars [15,16], by acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources. Quasars located between 0.5 z 1 are considerably ...

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“…However, an in-depth study is still lacking. Table 2 of [81]; the rightmost point corresponds to the supermassive black hole in Fairall 9 [82]. Supermassive black holes lying above each of these curves would be unstable on an observable timescale, and therefore they exclude the corresponding range of Proca field masses.…”

Section: Massive Fields Soft Bombs and Particle Physicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black hole bombs and explosions: from astrophysics to particle physics

Cardoso

2013

Gen Relativ Gravit

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Black holes are the elementary particles of gravity, the final state of sufficiently massive stars and of energetic collisions. With a forty-year long history, black hole physics is a fully-blossomed field which promises to embrace several branches of theoretical physics. Here I review the main developments in highly dynamical black holes with an emphasis on high energy black hole collisions and probes of particle physics via superradiance. This write-up, rather than being a collection of well known results, is intended to highlight open issues and the most intriguing results.Keywords Black holes · Superradiance · Cosmic Censorship · Transplanckian collisions IntroductionThe Kerr-Newman family of black holes in stationary four-dimensional, asymptotically flat spacetimes exhausts all possible electro-vacuum solutions in General Relativity. Theoretical aspects of black hole physics were fully developed decades ago, when the Kerr-Newman family was discovered and characterized. Most of the tools to understand black hole physics have been in place since that period and most processes involving black holes were controlled at the order-of-magnitude level for at least two decades. Perhaps due to these reasons, "black hole physics" conjures up images of horizons and time-warps and old-fashioned, frozen-in-time topics to lay audiences. However, in the last years the activity in the field is bubbling up Vitor Cardoso CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa -UTL, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049 Lisboa, Portugal E-mail: vitor.cardoso@ist.utl.pt Present address: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9, Canada 2 Vitor Cardoso and the interest in these issues has widened, driven by several unrelated events at the observational/instrumental, technical and conceptual levels such as (i) our capacity to observationally scrutinize the region close to the horizon within a few Schwarzschild radii, with radio and deep infrared interferometry, of which we have seen but the first steps [1,2,3,4];(ii) the ability to measure black hole spins more accurately than ever before using X-ray spectroscopy [5,6] or "continuum-fitting" methods [7]. Measurement of black hole mass and spin is one necessary step in testing General Relativity [8]; (iii) huge technological progress in gravitational-wave observatories, some of which had been gathering data at design sensitivities for several years and are now being upgraded to sensitivities one order of magnitude higher (black hole binaries are thought to be among the first objects to ever be detected in the gravitational-wave spectrum);(iv) our ability to numerically evolve black hole binaries at the full nonlinear level [9,10,11] and its immediate importance for gravitational-wave searches and high-energy physics [12]; (v) improvement of perturbative schemes, either by an understanding of regularization schemes to handle the self-force [13,14], or by faster and more powerful methods to deal with the full ladder of pe...

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CONSTRAINING THE SPIN OF THE BLACK HOLE IN FAIRALL 9 WITHSUZAKU

Cited by 74 publications

References 39 publications

Measuring Black Hole Spin Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy

Measuring Black Hole Spin Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy

Reflection from the strong gravity regime in a lensed quasar at redshift z = 0.658

Black hole bombs and explosions: from astrophysics to particle physics

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