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Register a new userConstraining the Spin of the Black Hole in Fairall 9 with Suzaku
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S. Schmoll
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We report on the results of spectral fits made to data obtained from a 168 ksec Suzaku observation of the Seyfert-1 galaxy Fairall 9. The source is clearly detected out to 30 keV. The observed spectrum is fairly simple; it is well-described by a power-law with a soft excess and disk reflection. A broad iron line is detected, and easily separated from distinct narrow components owing to the resolution of the CCDs in the X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS). The broad line is revealed to be asymmetric, consistent with a disk origin. We fit the XIS and Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) spectra with relativistically-blurred disk reflection models. With the assumption that the inner disk extends to the innermost stable circular orbit, the best-fit model implies a black hole spin parameter of a = 0.60(7) and excludes extremal values at a high level of confidence. We discuss this result in the context of Seyfert observations and models of the cosmic distribution of black hole spin.
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Fairall 9 is one of several type 1 active galactic nuclei for which it has been claimed that the angular momentum (or spin) of the supermassive black hole can be robustly measured, using the Fe K$alpha$ emission line and Compton-reflection continuum in the X-ray spectrum. The method rests upon the interpretation of the Fe K$alpha$ line profile and associated Compton-reflection continuum in terms of relativistic broadening in the strong gravity regime in the innermost regions of an accretion disc, within a few gravitational radii of the black hole. Here, we re-examine a Suzaku X-ray spectrum of Fairall 9 and show that a face-on toroidal X-ray reprocessor model involving only nonrelativistic and mundane physics provides an excellent fit to the data. The Fe K$alpha$ line emission and Compton reflection continuum are calculated self-consistently, the iron abundance is solar, and an equatorial column density of $sim 10^{24} rm cm^{-2}$ is inferred. In this scenario, neither the Fe K$alpha$ line, nor the Compton-reflection continuum provide any information on the black-hole spin. Whereas previous analyses have assumed an infinite column density for the distant-matter reprocessor, the shape of the reflection spectrum from matter with a finite column density eliminates the need for a relativistically broadened Fe K$alpha$ line. We find a 90 per cent confidence range in the Fe K$alpha$ line FWHM of $1895$-$6205 rm km s^{-1}$, corresponding to a distance of $sim 3100$ to $33,380$ gravitational radii from the black hole, or $0.015$-$0.49$ pc for a black-hole mass of $sim 1-3 times 10^{8} M_{odot}$.
Prior to the detection of black holes (BHs) via the gravitational waves (GWs) they generate at merger, the presence of BHs was inferred in X-ray binaries, mostly via dynamical measurements, with masses in the range between $sim 5-20~M_odot$. The LIGO discovery of the first BHs via GWs was surprising in that the two BHs that merged had masses of $35.6^{+4.8}_{-3.0}$ and $30.6^{+3.0}_{-4.4},M_odot$, which are both above the range inferred from X-ray binaries. With 20 BH detections from the O1/O2 runs, the distribution of masses remains generally higher than the X-ray inferred one, while the effective spins are generally lower, suggesting that, at least in part, the GW-detected population might be of dynamical origin rather than produced by the common evolution of field binaries. Here we perform high-resolution N-body simulations of a cluster of isolated BHs with a range of initial mass spectra and upper mass cut-offs, and study the resulting binary mass spectrum resulting from the dynamical interactions. Our clusters have properties similar to those of the massive remnants in an OB association $sim 10 , mathrm{Myr}$ after formation. We perform a likelihood analysis for each of our dynamically-formed binary population against the data from the O1 and O2 LIGO/Virgo runs. We find that an initial mass spectrum $M_{rm BH}propto M^{-2.35}$ with an upper mass cutoff $M_{rm max}sim 50M_odot$ is favored by the data, together with a slight preference for a merger rate that increases with redshift.
Recent gamma-ray and cosmic-ray observations have put strong constraints on the amount of primordial black holes (PBHs) in our universe. In this article, we use the archival radio data of the inner Galactic Centre to constrain the PBH to dark matter ratio for three different PBH mass distributions including monochromatic, log-normal and power-law. We show that the amount of PBHs only constitutes a very minor component of dark matter at the Galactic Centre for a large parameter space.
We observed the Galactic black hole candidate H1743-322 with Suzaku for approximately 32 ksec, while the source was in a low/hard state during its 2008 outburst. We collected and analyzed the data with the HXD/PIN, HXD/GSO and XIS cameras spanning the energy range from 0.7-200 keV. Fits to the spectra with simple models fail to detect narrow Fe XXV and Fe XXVI absorption lines, with 90% confidence upper limits of 3.5 eV and 2.5 eV on the equivalent width, respectively. These limits are commensurate with those in the very high state, but are well below the equivalent widths of lines detected in the high/soft state, suggesting that disk winds are partially state-dependent. We discuss these results in the context of previous detections of ionized Fe absorption lines in H1743-322 and connections to winds and jets in accreting systems. Additionally, we report the possible detection of disk reflection features, including an Fe K emission line.
We investigate a mechanism for a super-massive black hole at the center of a galaxy to wander in the nucleus region. A situation is supposed in which the central black hole tends to move by the gravitational attractions from the nearby molecular clouds in a nuclear bulge but is braked via the dynamical frictions by the ambient stars there. We estimate the approximate kinetic energy of the black hole in an equilibrium between the energy gain rate through the gravitational attractions and the energy loss rate through the dynamical frictions, in a nuclear bulge composed of a nuclear stellar disk and a nuclear stellar cluster as observed from our Galaxy. The wandering distance of the black hole in the gravitational potential of the nuclear bulge is evaluated to get as large as several 10 pc, when the black hole mass is relatively small. The distance, however, shrinks as the black hole mass increases and the equilibrium solution between the energy gain and loss disappears when the black hole mass exceeds an upper limit. As a result, we can expect the following scenario for the evolution of the black hole mass: When the black hole mass is smaller than the upper limit, mass accretion of the interstellar matter in the circum-nuclear region, causing the AGN activities, makes the black hole mass larger. However, when the mass gets to the upper limit, the black hole loses the balancing force against the dynamical friction and starts spiraling downward to the gravity center. From simple parameter scaling, the upper mass limit of the black hole is found to be proportional to the bulge mass and this could explain the observed correlation of the black hole mass with the bulge mass.
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