Related papers: Testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis using X-ray…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes of general relativity, but the actual nature of these objects has still to be confirmed. The continuum-fitting and the iron line methods are currently the only…
The spacetime geometry around astrophysical black holes is supposed to be well approximated by the Kerr metric, but deviations from the Kerr solution are predicted in a number of scenarios involving new physics. Broad iron K$\alpha$ lines…
The spin measurement of black holes has important implications in physics and astrophysics. Regardless of the specific technique to estimate the black hole spin, all the current approaches assume that the space-time geometry around the…
Spectral features can arise by reflection of coronal X-rays on a black hole accretion disc. The resulting profile bears various imprints of strong gravitational field acting on the light emitting gas. The observed shape of the reflection…
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…
The aperiodic variability ubiquitously observed from accreting black hole X-ray binary systems is generally analysed within the framework of the so-called ``theory of propagating fluctuations''. In this paper we derive the Fourier…
Current models of the spectrum of X-rays reflected from accretion disks around black holes and other compact objects are commonly calculated assuming that the density of the disk atmosphere is constant within several Thomson depths from the…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, as these objects cannot be explained otherwise without introducing new physics. However, there is no observational evidence that the…
The recent announcement of the detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration has opened a new window to test the nature of astrophysical black holes. Konoplya & Zhidenko have shown how the LIGO data of GW 150914 can…
Einstein's theory of general relativity has been extensively tested in weak gravitational fields, mainly with experiments in the Solar System and observations of radio pulsars, and current data agree well with the theoretical predictions.…
In this thesis, I study hydrodynamical models of slim accretion disks --- advective, optically thick disks which generalize the standard models of radiatively efficient thin disks to all accretion rates. I start with a general introduction…
The black hole X-ray binary H1743-322 lies in a region of the Galaxy with high extinction, and therefore it has not been possible to make a dynamical mass measurement. In this paper we make use of a recent model which uses the X-ray…
Most of the X-ray emission from luminous accreting black holes emerges from within 20 gravitational radii. The effective emission radius is several times smaller if the black hole is rapidly spinning. General Relativistic effects can then…
Electromagnetic observations have been used over the past decades to understand the nature of black holes and the material around them. Our ability to learn about the fundamental physics relies on our understanding of two key ingredients in…
X-rays are emitted from the corona above the orbiting matter of the accretion disk and travel either directly to us or illuminate the disk. This illumination of the inner disk is enhanced by gravitational light bending, which focuses the…
I review the current status of X-ray reflection (a.k.a. broad iron line) based black hole spin measurements. This is a powerful technique that allows us to measure robust black hole spins across the mass range, from the stellar-mass black…
Measuring relativistic reflection is an important tool to study the innermost regions of the an accreting black hole system. In the following we present a brief review on the different aspects contributing to the relativistic reflection.…
We present the analysis of X-ray observations of the black hole binary 4U~1630$-$47 using relativistic reflection spectroscopy. We use archival data from the RXTE, Swift, and NuSTAR observatories, taken during different outbursts of the…
We present the results of our studies on accretion disks in the proximity of astrophysical black holes. These disks can be of varying degrees of opacity, geometrical shapes, sizes, and volumes. The central compact object is a Schwarzschild…
The Ultra-luminous Compact X-ray Sources (ULXs) in nearby spiral galaxies and the Galactic super-luminal jet sources share the common spectral characteristic that they have extremely high disk temperatures which cannot be explained in the…