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arXiv · 1709.02900

Testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis with RELXILL_NK

Cosimo Bambi
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Abstract

Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes of general relativity. However, macroscopic deviations from the Kerr background are predicted by a number of scenarios beyond Einstein's gravity. X-ray reflection spectroscopy can be a powerful tool to probe the strong gravity region of these objects and test the Kerr black hole hypothesis. Here I briefly review the state of the art of this line of research and I present some constraints on possible deviations from the Kerr metric obtained with the new X-ray reflection model relxill_nk and XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and Swift data of the supermassive black hole in 1H0707-495.

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Cosimo Bambi. 2017-09-09. Testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis with RELXILL_NK. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596%2F942%2F1%2F012004

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