XMM-EPIC observation of MCG-6-30-15: direct evidence for the extraction of energy from a spinning black hole?

By J. Wilms, C. Reynolds, M. Begelman, J. Reeves, S. Molendi, Ruediger Stuabert, E. Kendziorra. 2001

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We present XMM-Newton European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) observations of the bright Seyfert 1 galaxy MCG 6-30-15, focusing on the broad Fe Kline at � 6keV and the associated reflection continuum, which is believed to originate from the inner accretion disk. We find these reflection features to be extremely broad and red-shifted, indicating its origin from the very most central regions of the accretion disk. It seems likely that we have caught this source in the "deep minimum" state first observed by Iwasawa et al. (1996). The implied central concentration of X-ray illumination is difficult to understand in any pure accretiondisk model. We suggest that we are witnessing the extraction and dissipation of rotational energy from a spinning black hole by magnetic fields connecting the black hole or plunging region to the disk.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9a571c519782456c3c29d6aab7ef8d99bae171bb

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Citations in the corpus

An absorption origin for the X-ray spectral variability of MCG-6-30-15 (2008, methodology): “…solely on modelling the hard, low-variability “offset” component as being relativistically-blurred reflected emission from the inner accretion disc (Wilms et al. 2001, Vaughan & Fabian 2004, Reynolds et al. 2004, Miniutti et al. 2007, Brenneman & Reynolds 2006), but those studies have only…”
Relativistic X-Ray Lines from the Inner Accretion Disks Around Black Holes (2007, methodology): “Whereas the fits made by Wilms et al. (2001) were based only on an XMMNewton spectrum, the long-look observation detailed by Fabian et al. (2002) was made simultaneously with BeppoSAX, providing a continuum determination up to 100 keV.”
Black Hole Mass and Spin Coevolution by Mergers (2002, background): “Mounting evidence, mostly from spiral galaxies, suggests that in many cases massive black holes nonetheless rapidly rotate [e.g., Wilms et al. (2001); Elvis, Risaliti, & Zamorani (2002)].”
Broad Iron Lines in Active Galactic Nuclei (2000, background): “Luckily enough, both models for the soft X-ray spectrum give equally good descriptions of the EPIC-pn spectrum (Wilms et al., 2001; Reynolds et al., 2003b), such that the interpretation of the X-ray continuum above 2 keV is not affected by the as of now unresolved conflict of the interpretation of…”
IMPROVED REFLECTION MODELS OF BLACK HOLE ACCRETION DISKS: TREATING THE ANGULAR DISTRIBUTION OF X-RAYS (2013, background): “Differences to the Angle-Average (relxill_lp) Recent measurements (Wilms et al. 2001; Fabian et al. 2002; Brenneman & Reynolds 2006; Dauser et al. 2012; Fabian et al. 2012b; Gallo et al. 2011; Ponti et al. 2010; Brenneman et al. 2011, 2013; Duro et al. 2011; Miller et al. 2006; Reis et al. 2008)…”
The role of the reflection fraction in constraining black hole spin (2014, background): “Such broadened reflection features are found in a large number of active galactic nuclei (AGN), such as, e.g., MCG−630-15 (Tanaka et al. 1995; Wilms et al. 2001; Fabian & Vaughan 2003; Marinucci et al. 2014), 1H0707−495 (Fabian et al. 2009; Dauser et al. 2012), or NGC 1365, (Risaliti et al. 2013),…”
A light bending model for the X-ray temporal and spectral properties of accreting black holes (2003, background): “…the profile of the broad iron line (most remarkably in the Seyfert 1 galaxy MCG–6-30-15) exhibits a singular behaviour: qualitatively, the line tends to be very broad inlow flux states, while a narrower core is detected in high flux state (Iwasawa et al. 1996; Wilms et al. 2001; Lee et al. 2002).”
A Measurement of the Electromagnetic Luminosity of a Kerr Black Hole (2004, background): “Despite some hints (e.g. Wilms et al. 2001, Miller et al. 2002, Maraschi & Tavecchio 2003) and the general consistency of this idea with the data, however, there is no direct observational evidence for black hole energy extraction.”
Fluorescent iron lines as a probe of astrophysical black hole systems (2002, background): “ plot are attributed to X-ray reﬂection from the relativistic disk. (c) Deconvolved spectrum of the iron K band portion of the spectrum, showing a very broadened and redshifted iron line. Figure from [218] tion features were found to be very broad and very strong (see Fig. 13). The detailed modeling”
An Extended Scheme for Fitting X-Ray Data with Accretion Disk Spectra in the Strong Gravity Regime (2004, background): “The mean XMM–Newton spectrum of MCG–6-30-15 analyzed here justifies rejection of the often-used plain power-law emissivity that depends solely on radius from the black hole.”
A long hard look at MCG–6-30-15 with XMM-Newton (2002, background): “…1999; Shih et al. 2002),BeppoSAX(Guainazzi et al. 1999),RXTE(Lee et al. 1999, 2000; Vaughan & Edelson 2001), Chandra(Lee et al. 2002) andXMM-Newton(Wilms et al. 2001, hereafter W01, and Fabian et al. 2002, hereafter paper I) have confirmed the presence of the broad, asymmetric emission feature.”
Irradiation of an accretion disc by a jet: general properties and implications for spin measurements of black holes (2013, methodology): “…setup, we will not be able to create steeper profiles than the standard one for a point source in order to explain the really steep emissivity indices measured in many observations (see, e.g., Wilms et al. 2001; Fabian et al. 2002; Fabian et al. 2004; Brenneman & Reynolds 2006; Dauser et al. 2012).”
Suzaku Observations of the Hard X-ray Variability of MCG-6-30-15: the Effects of Strong Gravity Around a Kerr Black Hole (2006, methodology): “Evidence that the black hole in MCG–6-30-15 is rapidly spinning has been obtained from the extreme breadth of the line by Iwasawa et al (1996), Dabrowski et al (1997), Wilms et al (2001), Fabian et al (2002) and most recently Reynolds et al (2005), who determine a spin parameter a= 0.989.”
The iron line in MCG—6-30-15 from XMM—Newton: evidence for gravitational light bending? (2003, unknown): “XMM–Newton has now observed MCG–6-3015 twice (Wilms et al. 2001; Fabian et al. 2002a) and in both cases the line extended down to about 3 keV.”
Chandra/High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer Spectroscopy of the Galactic Black Hole GX 339–4: A Relativistic Iron Emission Line and Evidence for a Seyfert-like Warm Absorber (2003, result): “It has become clear that skewed, relativistic Fe K lines imply that the inner accretion flow geometry in some Galactic black hole states may be very similar to that in Seyfert 1 galaxies (Wilms et al. 2001; Miller et al. 2002a, 2002c).”
Black hole accretion discs: reality confronts theory (2003, result): “Here the issues are even more emotive, as the line profile in XTE J1650–500 is similar to that of the AGN MCG–6– 30-15 (Wilms et al. 2001), the defining example of a spinning black hole.”
Broad emission lines for a negatively spinning black hole (2010, background): “Skew-symmetric, 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…”
The lack of variability of the iron line in MCG–6‐30‐15: general relativistic effects (2003, background): “The observed broad iron line profile and its extended red wing (Wilms et al. 2001; Fabian et al. 2002) imply that most of the emission originates at radii less than 6rg (rg = GM/c2), suggesting that the central black hole is rapidly spinning (Iwasawa et al. 1996; Dabrowski et al. 1997).”
Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei: Past, Present and Future Research (2004, background): “Indeed, ASCA and XMM observations of MCG-6-30-15 are best explained under the assumption of an almost maximally spinning SBH (Iwasawa 1996; Dabrowski et al. 1997; Wilms et al. 2001).”