Black hole masses from X-rays
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
2015-06-11 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Abstract
We discuss two methods to estimate black hole (BH) masses using X-ray data only: from the X-ray variability amplitude and from the photon index Gamma. The first method is based on the anti-correlation between BH mass and X-ray variability amplitude. Using a sample of AGN with BH masses from reverberation mapping, we show that this method shows small intrinsic scatter. The second method is based on the correlation between Gamma and both the Eddington ratio L_{bol}/L_{Edd} and the bolometric correction L_{bol}/L_{2-10keV}.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1210.4558,
title = {Black hole masses from X-rays},
author = {Xin-Lin Zhou and Roberto Soria},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.4558},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
2 pages, to appear in the proceedings of the IAU Symposium 290, "Feeding compact objects: accretion on all scales", Beijing, 20-24 Aug 2012