Testing the Keplerian disk hypothesis using X-ray reflection spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to test the Keplerian motion assumption in black hole accretion disks using X-ray reflection spectroscopy, by modifying existing models and analyzing observational data.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological parameter in the RELXILL model to quantify deviations from Keplerian motion and applies it to real observational data.

Findings

The parameter $mbda$ is correlated with disk inclination angle.

The model can test the Keplerian hypothesis with independent inclination measurements.

Application to GRS 1915+105 demonstrates the method's feasibility.

Abstract

The Novikov-Thorne model is the standard framework for the description of geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disks around black holes and is widely used to study the electromagnetic spectra of accreting black holes. One of the assumptions of the model is that the particles of the gas move on nearly-geodesic circular orbits on the equatorial plane. In this work, we propose to test the Keplerian velocity of the particles in the accretion disk using X-ray reflection spectroscopy. We present a modified version of RELXILL in which we introduce a phenomenological parameter, $\alpha$, to quantify possible deviations from Keplerian motion. We use our model to fit a Suzaku observation of the black hole binary GRS 1915+105. We find that the estimate of $\alpha$ is correlated to that of the inclination angle of the disk, $i$, and that we could test the Keplerian disk hypothesis in the presence of a robust and independent measurement of $i$.