English

Constraining the Johannsen deformation parameter $\epsilon_3$ with black hole X-ray data

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2019-04-04 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We extend our previous work on tests of the Kerr black hole hypothesis using X-ray reflection spectroscopy and we infer observational constraints on the Johannsen deformation parameter ϵ3\epsilon_3. We analyze a NuSTAR observation of the stellar-mass black hole in GS 1354-645, Suzaku data of the supermassive black holes in Ark 564, 1H0419-577, and PKS 0558-504, and some simultaneous XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations of the supermassive black hole in MCG-6-30-15. All our measurements of ϵ3\epsilon_3 are consistent with the Kerr metric and we find quite strong constraints from Ark 564 and MCG-6-30-15. We discuss the implications of our results and the next steps to improve our tests.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1903.04071,
  title  = {Constraining the Johannsen deformation parameter $\epsilon_3$ with black hole X-ray data},
  author = {Ashutosh Tripathi and Askar B. Abdikamalov and Dimitry Ayzenberg and Cosimo Bambi and Sourabh Nampalliwar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.04071},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

10 pages, 7 figures. v2: refereed version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:03:43.988Z