Related papers: Testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis using X-ray…
Einstein's theory of general relativity was proposed over 100 years ago and has successfully passed a large number of observational tests in the weak field regime. However, the strong field regime is largely unexplored, and there are many…
We investigate the global properties of the radiation emitted by the accretion disk around Kerr black holes. Using the Kerr blackbody (KERRBB) numerical model, we build an analytic approximation of the disk emission features focusing on the…
The accretion-ejection activities of black holes play a vital role in shaping the Universe. Bright and recurrent black hole X-ray binaries are ideal objects for studying accretion physics across a wide range of accretion rates, providing…
Today we have quite stringent constraints on possible violations of the Weak Equivalence Principle from the comparison of the acceleration of test-bodies of different composition in Earth's gravitational field. In the present paper, we…
X-ray spectroscopy of galactic black hole binaries serve as a powerful tool to gain an overall understanding of the system. Not only can the properties of the accretion disk be studied in detail, the fundamental properties of the black hole…
The advent of the large effective apertures of the Keck telescopes has resulted in the determination with unprecedented accuracy of the mass functions and mass ratios of faint (R ~ 21 mag) X-ray transients (GS 2000+25, GRO J0422+32, Nova…
This paper investigates the observable properties of a Kerr-Sen black hole surrounded by a thin accretion disk, focusing on the impact of the black hole's spin and charge on the image. Using ray-tracing techniques, we conduct a detailed…
We present a high density disc reflection spectral analysis of a sample of 17 Seyfert 1 galaxies to study the inner disc densities at different black hole mass scales and accretion rates. All the available XMM-Newton observations in the…
Astrophysical black holes are ideal laboratories for testing Einstein's theory of general relativity in the strong field regime. In this manuscript, we present an analysis of Suzaku and NuSTAR spectra of the black hole binary Cygnus X-1…
Spectro-polarimetric signatures of accretion disks in X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei contain information about the masses and spins of their central black holes, as well as the geometry of matter close to the compact objects.…
We present the study of a sample of seven "bare" active galactic nuclei (AGN) observed with Suzaku. We interpret the spectrum of these sources with a relativistic reflection component and we employ our model RELXILL_NK to test the Kerr…
We construct a relativistic reflection model in a non-Kerr spacetime in which, depending on the value of the deformation parameter of the metric, there are black hole solutions with spin parameter $|a_*| > 1$. We apply our model to fit…
While Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) has been tested extensively in our solar system, it is just beginning to be tested in the strong gravitational fields that surround black holes. As a way to study the behavior of…
We generalise the relativistic accretion thick disc model to the background of a spinning charged accelerating black hole described by the C-metric to study the effects of this background on the disc model. We show the properties of this…
Based on a new estimation of their thickness, the global properties of relativistic slim accretion disks are investigated in this work. The resulting emergent spectra are calculated using the relativistic ray-tracing method, in which we…
The super-massive objects in galactic nuclei are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, although a definite proof of their actual nature is still lacking. The most massive objects in AGN ($M \sim 10^9 M_\odot$)…
The X-ray reflection features of irradiated accretion disks around black holes enable us to probe the effects of strong gravity. We investigate to which precision the reflection signs, i.e. the iron K-line and the Comptonized hump, can be…
Rebirth of X-ray polarimetric instruments will have a significant impact on our knowledge of compact accreting sources. The properties of inner-accreting regions of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or X-ray binary systems (XRBs), such as…
The degree to which the thin accretion disks of black hole X-ray binaries are truncated during hard spectral states remains a contentious open question in black hole astrophysics. During its singular observed outburst in…
This paper examines the general relativistic model of a geometrically thick configuration of an accretion disc around an electrically charged black hole in an accelerated motion, as described by the C-metric family. We aim to study the…