Related papers: XSPEC model for testing the Kerr black hole hypoth…
The models currently used for the analysis of the reflection spectra of black holes usually assume a disk with constant ionization and electron density. However, there is some debate on the impact of these assumptions on the estimate of the…
We present a general relativistic accretion disc model and its application to the soft-state X-ray spectra of black hole binaries. The model assumes a flat, optically thick disc around a rotating Kerr black hole. The disc locally radiates…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes of general relativity. However, macroscopic deviations from the Kerr background are predicted by a number of scenarios beyond Einstein's gravity. X-ray reflection…
The continuum-fitting and the iron-line methods are currently the two leading techniques for measuring the spins of accreting black holes. In the past few years, these two methods have been developed for testing fundamental physics. In the…
According to the no-hair theorem, astrophysical black holes are uniquely described by the Kerr metric. In order to test this theorem with observations in either the electromagnetic or gravitational-wave spectra, several Kerr-like spacetimes…
The continuum-fitting method is one of the two most advanced methods of determining the black hole spin in accreting X-ray binary systems. There are, however, still some unresolved issues with the underlying disk models. One of them…
The launch of the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) heralded a new era of sensitive high energy X-ray spectroscopy for X-ray binaries (XRBs). In this paper we show how multiple physical parameters can be measured from the…
In a previous paper, one of us calculated iron K$\alpha$ line profiles emitted from possible accretion disks around traversable wormholes as a first step to use X-ray reflection spectroscopy to search for astrophysical wormholes in active…
X-ray binaries (XRBs) display spectral state transitions that are accompanied by substantial changes in the hardness, luminosity, and structure of the accretion flow. We developed a GPU-accelerated cooling toolkit for general relativistic…
We present a new model to calculate reflection spectra of thin accretion disks in Kerr spacetimes. Our model includes the effect of returning radiation, which is the radiation that is emitted by the disk and returns to the disk because of…
In the vicinity of black holes, the influence of strong gravity, plasma physics, and emission processes govern the behavior of the system. Since observations such as those carried out by the EHT are not yet able to unambiguously constrain…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, but the actual nature of these objects has still to be proven. The analysis of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a…
X-ray spectral modeling is a powerful tool for studying the immediate environment of accreting objects, including supermassive black holes. Several models, either phenomenological or physically driven, have been developed over the past…
The accreting collapsed object GRO J1655-40 could contain the gravitomagnetic monopole (GMM), and it was shown to be better described by the Kerr-Taub-NUT (KTN) spacetime instead of the Kerr spacetime. The warped accretion disk has also…
Variable features in black hole X-ray Binaries (BH-XRBs) are observed in different energy ranges and time scales. The physical origin of different spectral states in BH-XRBs and their relations with the underlying accretion disc are still…
X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a promising technique for testing general relativity in the strong field regime, as it can be used to test the Kerr black hole hypothesis. In this context, the parametrically deformed black hole metrics…
X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study the strong gravity region of black holes. The next generation of astrophysical X-ray missions promises to provide unprecedented high-quality data, which could permit us to get very…
Recently, Kumar and Ghosh have derived Kerr-like rotating black hole solutions in the framework of four-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory of gravity and investigated the black hole shadow. Using the steady-state Novikov-Thorne model,…
We consider and compare the Bondi and Novikov-Thorne accretion mechanisms in spherically symmetric regular black holes. To do so, we model the dark matter distribution adopting two main approaches. The first takes into account a…
The spins of ten stellar black holes have been measured using the continuum-fitting method. These black holes are located in two distinct classes of X-ray binary systems, one that is persistently X-ray bright and another that is transient.…