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arXiv · 1709.00219

Testing general relativity with the reflection spectrum of the supermassive black hole in 1H0707$-$495

Zheng Cao·Sourabh Nampalliwar·Cosimo Bambi·Thomas Dauser·Javier A. Garcia
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Abstract

Recently, we have extended the X-ray reflection model relxill to test the spacetime metric in the strong gravitational field of astrophysical black holes. In the present Letter, we employ this extended model to analyze XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and Swift data of the supermassive black hole in 1H0707-495 and test deviations from a Kerr metric parametrized by the Johannsen deformation parameter $\alpha_{13}$. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the spacetime metric around the black hole in 1H0707-495 is described by the Kerr solution.

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Zheng Cao, Sourabh Nampalliwar, Cosimo Bambi, Thomas Dauser, Javier A. Garcia. 2017-09-01. Testing general relativity with the reflection spectrum of the supermassive black hole in 1H0707$-$495. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.120.051101

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