Measuring the Spins of Stellar Black Holes: A Progress Report
J. E. McClintock, R. Narayan, L. Gou, J. Liu, R. F. Penna, J. F., Steiner
TL;DR
This paper reviews progress in measuring stellar black hole spins using X-ray spectral fitting, highlighting recent results, methodological advances, and efforts to validate the models involved.
Contribution
It presents new measurements of black hole spins, discusses methodological improvements, and validates the theoretical models used for spectral fitting.
Findings
Spin measurements for six black hole systems
Development of open-source analysis software
Validation of the Novikov-Thorne model
Abstract
We use the Novikov-Thorne thin disk model to fit the thermal continuum X-ray spectra of black hole X-ray binaries, and thereby extract the dimensionless spin parameter a* = a/M of the black hole as a parameter of the fit. We summarize the results obtained to date for six systems and describe work in progress on additional systems. We also describe recent methodological advances, our current efforts to make our analysis software fully available to others, and our theoretical efforts to validate the Novikov-Thorne model.
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