Testing the Kerr hypothesis using x-ray reflection spectroscopy with NuSTAR data of Cygnus X-1 in the soft state

Creators: Liu, Honghui; Abdikamalov, Askar B.; Ayzenberg, Dimitry; Bambi, Cosimo; Dauser, Thomas; García, Javier A.; Nampalliwar, Sourabh

Abstract

We continue exploring the constraining capabilities of x-ray reflection spectroscopy to test the Kerr-nature of astrophysical black holes, and we present the results of our analysis of two NuSTAR observations of Cygnus X-1 in the soft state. We find that the final measurement can strongly depend on the assumption of the intensity profile. We conclude that Cygnus X-1 is not suitable for tests of general relativity using x-ray reflection spectroscopy, and we discuss the desired properties of a source to be a good candidate for our studies.

Additional Information

© 2019 American Physical Society. Received 19 April 2019; published 11 June 2019. We thank Dominic Walton for providing us his xstar table. This work was supported by the Innovation Program of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, Grant No. 2019-01-07-00-07-E00035, and Fudan University, Grant No. IDH1512060. A. B. A. also acknowledges the support from the Shanghai Government Scholarship (SGS). J. A. G. and S. N. acknowledge support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. S. N. also acknowledges support from the Excellence Initiative at Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen.

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Published - PhysRevD.99.123007.pdf

Submitted - 1904.08027.pdf

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