Advection-Dominated Accretion and Black Hole Event Horizons
Astrophysics
2009-10-30 v1
Abstract
The defining characteristic of a black hole is that it possesses an event horizon through which matter and energy can fall in but from which nothing escapes. Soft X-ray transients (SXTs), a class of X-ray binaries, appear to confirm this fundamental property of black holes. SXTs that are thought to contain accreting black holes display a large variation of luminosity between their bright and faint states, while SXTs with accreting neutron stars have a smaller variation. This difference is predicted if the former stars have horizons and the latter have normal surfaces.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9701139,
title = {Advection-Dominated Accretion and Black Hole Event Horizons},
author = {Ramesh Narayan and Michael R. Garcia and Jeffrey E. McClintock},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9701139},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
11 pages, including 2 tables and 2 figures. To appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters