Suzaku Observations of the Hard X-ray Variability of MCG-6-30-15: the Effects of Strong Gravity Around a Kerr Black Hole

By G. Miniutti, A. C. Fabian, N. Anabuki, J. Crummy, Y. Fukazawa, L. Gallo, Y. Haba, K. Hayashida, S. Holt, H. Kunieda and 14 more. 2006

136 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Suzaku has, for the first time, enabled the hard X-ray variability of the Seyfert 1 galaxy MCG-6-30-15 to be measured. The variability in the 14-45 keV band, which is dominated by a strong reflection hump, is quenched relative to that at a few keV. This directly demonstrates that the whole reflection spectrum is much less variable than the power-law continuum. The broadband spectral variability can be decomposed into two components - a highly variable power-law and constant reflection - as previously inferred from other observations in the 2-10 keV band. The strong reflection and high iron abundance give rise to a strong broad iron line, which requires the inner disc radius to be at about 2 gravitational radii. Our results are consistent with the predictions of the light bending model which invokes the very strong gravitational effects expected very close to a rapidly spinning black hole.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/876639b899932625b61a7a4c210d45f799205adf

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. C. Reynolds
2. A. C. Fabian
3. T. Dauser
4. J. Miller
5. J. Reeves
6. L. Brenneman
7. L. Miller
8. J. Wilms

In Biomedical Engineering

1. C. Reynolds
2. J. Miller
3. A. C. Fabian
4. L. Brenneman
5. T. Dauser
6. Ramesh Narayan
7. J. E. McClintock
8. J. Steiner

Citations in the corpus

• Relativistic X-Ray Lines from the Inner Accretion Disks Around Black Holes (2007, methodology): “Spectra of MCG-6-30-15 reveal relativistically-skewed disk reflection, consistent with the relativistic iron line detected in XMM-Newton observations (Miniutti et al. 2007).”
• Broad emission lines for a negatively spinning black hole (2010, background): “…broadened Fe Kα emission lines are seen in many Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) such as MCG−6-30-15 (Tanaka et al. 1995; Wilms et al. 2001; Miniutti et al. 2007), 1H0707−495 (Fabian et al. 2009), and others (Nandra et al. 2007), Galactic black hole binaries such as Cygnus X-1 (Fabian et…”
• An absorption origin for the X-ray spectral variability of MCG-6-30-15 (2008, methodology): “The Suzaku dataset comprises three observations made in 2006 as tabulated and previously described and analysed by Miniutti et al. (2007).”
• Broad Iron-Kα Emission Lines as a Diagnostic of Black Hole Spin (2007, methodology): “Observational support for just such a geometry has emerged from detailed studies of iron line and reflection bump variability by XMM-Newton (Fabian & Vaughan 2003; Miniutti & Fabian 2004) and Suzaku (Miniutti et al. 2007).”