THE CONSTANT INNER-DISK RADIUS OF LMC X-3: A BASIS FOR MEASURING BLACK HOLE SPIN

By J. Steiner, J. E. McClintock, Ronald A. Remillard, Lijun Gou, S. Yamada, Ramesh Narayan. 2010

148 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The black hole binary system LMC X-3 has been observed by virtually every X-ray mission since the inception of X-ray astronomy. Among the persistent sources, LMC X-3 is uniquely both habitually soft and highly variable. Using a fully relativistic accretion disk model, we analyze hundreds of spectra collected during eight X-ray missions that span 26 years. For a selected sample of 391 RXTE spectra, we find that to within ≈2% the inner radius of the accretion disk is constant over time and unaffected by source variability. Even considering an ensemble of eight X-ray missions, we find consistent values of the radius to within ≈4%–6%. Our results provide strong evidence for the existence of a fixed inner-disk radius. The only reasonable inference is that this radius is closely associated with the general relativistic innermost stable circular orbit. Our findings establish a firm foundation for the measurement of black hole spin.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/47e8ecee497259d14044c907bb7ca001ed99e097

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Citations in the corpus

Observational evidence for a correlation between jet power and black hole spin (2011, background): “The standout example is LMC X-3 with 411 spectra collected by eight X-ray missions over 26 years (Steiner et al. 2010).”
Superradiance (2015, methodology): “While important caveats exist for both traditional approaches, convincing evidence for truncation at the ISCO comes from the consistent position of the inner disc edge in LMC X-3 from modeling of the thermal dominant state, providing a remarkably stable spin value over a baseline of 26 yr [633].”
Testing the Kerr Black Hole Hypothesis Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy (2016, background): “Similar disks are thought to form when the source is in the thermal state with an accretion luminosity between a few percent and about 30% of its Eddington limit (McClintock et al. 2006; Penna et al. 2010; Steiner et al. 2010).”
Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets (2013, background): “A recent study of the persistent source LMC X-3 presents the most compelling evidence to date for a constant inner-disk radius (Steiner et al. 2010).”
Swift J1644+57 gone MAD: the case for dynamically-important magnetic flux threading the black hole in a jetted tidal disruption event (2013, background): “1; by more than two orders of magnitude) can thus plausibly be associated with the point at which Ṁ ∼ 0.3ṀEdd (Steiner et al. 2009, 2010; Abramowicz et al. 2010).”
Measuring the spins of accreting black holes (2011, methodology): “In a sense, we have attempted the first test of the no hair theorem by measuring the spin of XTE J1550−564 by two independent methods, the CF method and the Fe Kα method (section 7), and finding agreement.”
The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes (2014, background): “Some studies of disks over a span of relatively high Eddington fractions, and over long periods of time, strongly suggest that inner disk radii are stable [193,194].”
The spin of the black hole microquasar XTE J1550−564 via the continuum-fitting and Fe-line methods (2010, methodology): “The custom multiplicative component CRABCOR corrects the response of the PCA detector to the Toor & Seward spectrum of the Crab (see Toor & Seward 1974; Steiner et al. 2010).”
THE EXTREME SPIN OF THE BLACK HOLE IN CYGNUS X-1 (2011, methodology): “LMC X-3 is a prime example; its inner-disk radius has been shown to be stable to several percent over a period of 26 years (Done et al. 2007; Steiner et al. 2010).”
Testing black hole candidates with electromagnetic radiation (2015, background): “The analysis of many spectra collected during eight X-ray missions and spanning 26 years shows that the radius of the inner edge of the disk is quite constant (Steiner et al., 2010).”
Precise mass and spin measurements for a stellar-mass black hole through X-ray timing: the case of GRO J1655-40 (2013, methodology): “…while in the continuum-fitting method the thermal X-ray continuum spectrum of the accretion disc is modelled (McClintock et al. 2011, 2013 for recent reviews and e.g. Shafee et al. 2006; Liu et al. 2008, Gou et al. 2009; Steiner et al. 2010; Steiner et al. 2011; Steiner, McClintock & Reid 2012).”