Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...210.3505b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #35.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.149
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Black holes can be completely defined by their mass and spin alone. But whereas the mass of a black hole is fairly simple to calculate through any number of methods, spin has proven much more challenging to constrain. One of the most promising and robust methods for measuring this quantity relies on modeling the relativistically altered shape of the iron-K spectral line emitted from the accretion disk around a black hole. Employing this technique, I have expanded upon previous emission line model codes to create a new relativistic emission line model which allows the black hole spin to be fit as a free parameter. This allows us to robustly constrain the angular momentum of a black hole for the first time. Herein I present the results of spectral fitting of this model to several AGN with robustly observed broad iron lines in an effort to perform the very first statistically robust study of black hole spin distribution in these types of sources. This is a crucial first step toward taking a census of black hole spin in both AGN and GBHCs.
I gratefully acknowledge funding from NSF grant AST0205990, which has contributed to this research.
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