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Tests of the Kerr hypothesis with GRS 1915+105 using different RELXILL flavors

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arxiv 1907.03084 v2 pith:65JZHMV4 submitted 2019-07-06 gr-qc astro-ph.HE

classification gr-qcastro-ph.HE
keywords dataintensitykerrprofiledifferenthypothesisimportantrelxill
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In a previous paper, we tried to test the Kerr nature of the stellar-mass black hole in GRS 1915+105 by analyzing NuSTAR data of 2012 with our reflection model RELXILL_NK. We found that the choice of the intensity profile of the reflection component is crucial and eventually we were not able to get any constraint on the spacetime metric around the black hole in GRS 1915+105. In the present paper, we study the same source with Suzaku data of 2007. We confirm that the intensity profile plays an important role, but now we find quite stringent constraints consistent with the Kerr hypothesis. The key differences with respect to our previous study are likely the lower disk temperature in the Suzaku observation and the higher energy resolution near the iron line of the Suzaku data. We also apply different RELXILL flavors (different descriptions of the coronal spectrum and variable disk electron density) obtaining essentially the same results. We thus conclude that this choice is not very important for our tests of the Kerr hypothesis while the intensity profile does play an important role, and that with high quality data it is possible to measure both the spacetime metric and the intensity profile.

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Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Relativistic reflection spectra of super-spinning black holes

    gr-qc 2019-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Fitting Suzaku reflection spectra with a super-spinning spacetime model finds apparent deviations from Kerr in Ark 120 and Swift J0501.9, but the 3-sigma claim is not consistently supported for Swift.

  2. RELXILL_NK: A Black Hole Relativistic Reflection Model for Testing General Relativity

    gr-qc 2019-08 conditional novelty 3.0 of 10

    RELXILL_NK, a publicly available X-ray reflection model that includes non-Kerr black hole spacetimes, is presented and three of its flavors are compared using the Johannsen metric.

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