X-ray flares reveal mass and angular momentum of the Galactic Center black hole
By B. Aschenbach, N. Grosso, D. Porquet, P. C. M. F. E. Physik, Garching, Heidelberg · Germany, L. D. D. Grenoble, Universite Joseph-Fourier, Grenoble, France.. 2004
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We have analysed the light curve of the two brightest X-ray flares from the Galactic Center black hole, one flare observed by XMM-Newton on October 3, 2002 (Porquet et al. \cite{P2003}), and the other flare observed by Chandra on October 26, 2000 (Baganoff et al. \cite{B2001}). The power density spectra show five distinct peaks at periods of ˜100 s, 219 s, 700 s, 1150 s, and 2250 s common to both observations within their estimated measurement uncertainties. The power density spectrum of the recently reported infrared flare of June 16, 2003 (Genzel et al. \cite{Ge2003}) shows distinct peaks at two, if not three, periods (including the 1008 ± 120 s infrared period), which are consistent with the X-ray periods. The remaining two periods could not be covered by the infrared measurements. Each period can be identified with one of the characteristic gravitational cyclic modes associated with accretion disks, i.e. either Lense-Thirring precession, Kepler orbital motion and the vertical and radial epicyclic oscillation modes, in such a way that a consistent value for the black hole mass of MBH = 2.72 +0.12-0.19× 10 6 M⊙ and the angular momentum a = 0.9939 +0.0026-0.0074 is obtained. The available data on MBH derived from studies of the orbital motion of the S2 (S0-2) star (Schodel et al. \cite{S2002}; Ghez et al. \cite{Gh2003}) agree with our findings. Finally we discuss some implications of the fairly high value for the angular momentum.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6705e4d1c2c63920829589844defeb91781e710a
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Citations in the corpus
- SINFONI in the Galactic Center: Young Stars and Infrared Flares in the Central Light-Month (2005, background): “If the central black hole has itself angular momentum (Genzel et al. 2003a; Aschenbach et al. 2004; Aschenbach 2004), Lense-Thirring precession will change the orientation of the angular momentum vector, unless that vector happens to be co-aligned with that of the black hole.”
- DETECTING FLARING STRUCTURES IN SAGITTARIUS A* WITH HIGH-FREQUENCY VLBI (2008, background): “Indeed, several authors have argued that the black hole must be rotating based on observed 59 rapid X-ray and infrared periodicities (Aschenbach et al. 2004; Bélanger et al. 2006; Meyer et al. 2006).”
- Multi-resonance orbital model of high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations: possible high-precision determination of black hole and neutron star spin (2013, background): “In Sgr A∗, three Article number, page 2 of 43 Z. Stuchlík et al.: On the possibility of determination of black hole and neutron star spin frequencies were reported with ratios close to 3 : 2 : 1 (Aschenbach 2004; Aschenbach et al. 2004; Török 2005).”
- Imaging bright-spots in the accretion flow near the black hole horizon of Sgr A* (2005, background): “…and X-ray bands revealed flaring activity on short time-scales (Baganoff et al. 2001; Genzel et al. 2003; Goldwurm et al. 2003; Porquet et al. 2003; Aschenbach et al. 2004; Eckart et al. 2004; Ghez et al. 2004), indicating strong inhomogeneities in the emission close to the black hole horizon.”
- Orbital resonances in discs around braneworld Kerr black holes (2008, background): “Indeed, observations of the kHz QPOs in the microquasar GRS 1915 + 105, and of the QPOs in extragalactic sources NGC 4051, MCG-6-30-15 [46] and NGC 5408 X-1 [70], and the Galaxy center Sgr A ∗ [ 13 ] show a variety of QPOs with frequency ratios differing”