Other
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21712304m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #123.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Other
Scientific paper
Our team has published the spins of six accreting black holes, and I will present our results for two others, XTE J1550-564 and Cygnus X-1. I will discuss the implications of our spin data for models of relativistic jets and black hole formation. We measure spin by fitting the thermal continuum X-ray spectrum of the black hole to the relativistic thin-disk model of Novikov and Thorne, thereby determining the radius of the inner edge of the disk. We identify this disk radius with the black hole's innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO). It is then trivial to deduce the spin, which for a black hole of known mass depends solely on the radius of the ISCO via a standard GR formula. Strong theoretical evidence that the thin accretion disks we study are sharply truncated at the ISCO is provided by our GRMHD simulations. Likewise, strong empirical support for identifying the disk radius we measure with the radius of the ISCO is provided by decades of observational evidence, including our recent and compelling study of LMC X-3. We find for this persistent source, based on an analysis of hundreds of spectra collected over a span of 26 years by eight X-ray satellites, that the inner radius of the accretion disk is stable to approximately 4 percent. Thus, our measurements of spin are supported by both observational and theoretical evidence.
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