English

Tests of the Kerr Hypothesis with MAXI J1803-298 Using Different RELXILL_NK Flavors

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2024-04-10 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Iron line spectroscopy has been one of the leading methods not only for measuring the spins of accreting black holes but also for testing fundamental physics. Basing on such a method, we present an analysis of a dataset observed simultaneously by NuSTAR and NICER for the black hole binary candidate MAXI J1803-298, which shows prominent relativistic reflection features. Various relxill_nk flavors are utilized to test the Kerr black hole hypothesis. The results obtained from our analysis provide stringent constraints on Johannsen deformation parameter α13\alpha_{13} with the highest precise to date, namely α13=0.0230.038+0.071\alpha_{13}=0.023^{+0.071}_{-0.038} from relxillD_nk and α13=0.0060.022+0.045\alpha_{13}=0.006^{+0.045}_{-0.022} from relxillion_nk respectively in 3-σ\sigma credible lever, where Johannsen metric reduces to Kerr metric when α13\alpha_{13} vanishes. Furthermore, we investigate the best model-fit results using Akaike Information Criterion and assess its systematic uncertainties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.06020,
  title  = {Tests of the Kerr Hypothesis with MAXI J1803-298 Using Different RELXILL_NK Flavors},
  author = {Jie Liao and M. Ghasemi-Nodehi and Lang Cui and Ashutosh Tripathi and Yong-Feng Huang and Xiang Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.06020},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Accepted by ApJ