Stellar-mass Black Hole Spin Measurements and its Implementation

ABSTRACT The two established techniques for measuring black hole spin in X-ray binaries often yield conflicting results, which must be resolved before either method may be deemed robust. In practice, black hole spin measurements based on fitting the accretion disc continuum effectively do not marginalize over the colour-correction factor fcol. This factor parametrizes spectral hardening of the disc continuum by the disc atmosphere, whose true properties are poorly constrained. We incorporate reasonable systematic uncertainties in fcol into the eight (non-maximal) black hole spin measurements vetted by the disc continuum fitting community. In most cases, an fcol uncertainty of ±0.2–0.3 dominates the black hole spin error budget. We go on to demonstrate that plausible departures in fcol values from those adopted by the disc continuum fitting practitioners can bring the discrepant black hole spins into agreement with those from iron line modelling. Systematic uncertainties in fcol, such as the effects of strong magnetization, should be better understood before dismissing their potentially dominant impact on the black hole spin error budget.

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Erratum to: Stringent constraints on the light boson model with supermassive black hole spin measurements

The European Physical Journal Plus ◽

10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-01059-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 136 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Lei Zu ◽

Lei Feng ◽

Qiang Yuan ◽

Yi-Zhong Fan

Keyword(s):

Black Hole ◽

Supermassive Black Hole ◽

Black Hole Spin ◽

Boson Model ◽

Spin Measurements

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Substructure in black hole scaling diagrams and implications for the coevolution of black holes and galaxies

Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union ◽

10.1017/s1743921320001726 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (S359) ◽

pp. 37-39

Author(s):

Benjamin L. Davis ◽

Nandini Sahu ◽

Alister W. Graham

Keyword(s):

Black Hole ◽

Stellar Mass ◽

Host Galaxy ◽

Scaling Relations ◽

Black Hole Mass ◽

Physical Processes ◽

Stellar Velocity ◽

Galaxy Sample ◽

Evolutionary Paths ◽

Black Hole Masses

AbstractOur multi-component photometric decomposition of the largest galaxy sample to date with dynamically-measured black hole masses nearly doubles the number of such galaxies. We have discovered substantially modified scaling relations between the black hole mass and the host galaxy properties, including the spheroid (bulge) stellar mass, the total galaxy stellar mass, and the central stellar velocity dispersion. These refinements partly arose because we were able to explore the scaling relations for various sub-populations of galaxies built by different physical processes, as traced by the presence of a disk, early-type versus late-type galaxies, or a Sérsic versus core-Sérsic spheroid light profile. The new relations appear fundamentally linked with the evolutionary paths followed by galaxies, and they have ramifications for simulations and formation theories involving both quenching and accretion.

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