Testing General Relativity with Black Hole X-Ray Data and ABHModels

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advancements in testing General Relativity using black hole observations, focusing on X-ray data and the ABHModels software suite, highlighting new methods and current results in the strong field regime.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of current techniques and introduces the ABHModels code suite for testing General Relativity with black hole X-ray data.

Findings

Progress in testing GR with black hole data over the past decade

Availability of public codes for analysis

Enhanced understanding of strong field gravity

Abstract

The past 10 years have seen tremendous progress in our capability of testing General Relativity in the strong field regime with black hole observations. 10 years ago, the theory of General Relativity was almost completely unexplored in the strong field regime. Today, we have gravitational wave data of the coalescence of stellar-mass black holes, radio images of the supermassive black holes SgrA$^*$ and M87$^*$, and high-quality X-ray data of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries and supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. In this manuscript, we will review current efforts to test General Relativity with black hole X-ray data and we will provide a detailed description of the public codes available on ABHModels.