Sie befinden Sich nicht im Netzwerk der Universität Paderborn. Der Zugriff auf elektronische Ressourcen ist gegebenenfalls nur via VPN oder Shibboleth (DFN-AAI) möglich. mehr Informationen...
Measuring Black Hole Spin Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy
Ist Teil von
Space science reviews, 2014-09, Vol.183 (1-4), p.277-294
Ort / Verlag
Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands
Erscheinungsjahr
2014
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
SpringerLink
Beschreibungen/Notizen
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 rapidly-spinning, 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.