English

Testing general relativity with X-ray reflection spectroscopy of MCG-06-30-15

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2018-01-17 v1

Abstract

The spacetime geometry around astrophysical black holes is well approximated by the Kerr metric, but deviations from standard predictions are possible in a number of scenarios beyond Einstein's gravity and in the presence of exotic matter. In this paper, we present the constraints on possible deviations from the Kerr solution using X-ray reflection spectroscopy from the analysis of real data. We use the relativistic X-ray reflection code RELXILL modified to a generic stationary, axisymmetric and asymptotically flat black hole metric. We analyze 350 ks long XMM-Newton observations of the AGN in MCG-06-30-15 taken during July-August 2001 and constrain the Johannsen deformation parameter α13\alpha_{13}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.10213,
  title  = {Testing general relativity with X-ray reflection spectroscopy of MCG-06-30-15},
  author = {Ashutosh Tripathi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.10213},
  year   = {2018}
}