Related papers: Testing General Relativity with Black Hole X-Ray D…
We review the recent multifrequency studies of galactic black hole binaries, aiming at revealing the underlying emission processes and physical properties in these systems. The optical and infrared observations are important for determining…
Thanks to the recent discoveries of gravitational wave signals from binary black hole mergers by Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and Advanced Virgo, the genuinely strong-field dynamics of spacetime can now be…
Currently available information on fast variability of the X-ray emission from accreting collapsed objects constitutes a complex phenomenology which is difficult to interpret. We review the current observational standpoint for black-hole…
Relativistic reflection features in the X-ray spectra of black hole binaries and AGNs originate from illumination of the inner part of the accretion disk by a hot corona. In the presence of high quality data and with the correct…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes of general relativity, but there is not yet direct observational evidence that the spacetime geometry around these objects is described by the Kerr solution. The…
Several works over the past years have discussed the possibility of testing fundamental physics using Very Long Baseline Interferometry horizon-scale black hole (BH) images, such as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images of M87$^*$ and…
Spectroscopy of the broad iron iron with ASCA and BeppoSAX has up opened the innermost regions of accreting black hole systems to detailed study. In this contribution, I discuss how observations with future X-ray missions will extend these…
The iron line and the continuum-fitting methods are currently the two leading techniques for measuring black hole spins with electromagnetic radiation. They can be naturally extended for probing the spacetime geometry around black holes and…
Horizon-scale images of black holes (BHs) and their shadows have opened an unprecedented window onto tests of gravity and fundamental physics in the strong-field regime. We consider a wide range of well-motivated deviations from classical…
The coalescences of stellar-mass black-hole binaries through their inspiral, merger, and ringdown are among the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. If a GW signal is observed with sufficient…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicts that the spacetime metric around astrophysical black holes is described by the Kerr solution. In this work, we employ state-of-the-art in relativistic reflection modeling to analyze a…
We use the Relativistic Precession Model (RPM) (Stella et al. 1999a) and quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) observations from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer to derive constraints on the properties of the black holes that power these sources…
Relativistic X-ray emission lines from the inner accretion disk around black holes are reviewed. Recent observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission-Newton, and Suzaku are revealing these lines to be good…
X-ray studies of stellar mass black holes in X-ray binaries and mass-accreting supermassive black holes in Active Galactic Nuclei have achieved a high degree of maturity and have delivered detailed information about the astrophysical…
Effective field theory methods suggest that some rather-general extensions of General Relativity include, or are mimicked by, certain higher-order curvature corrections, with coupling constants expected to be small but otherwise arbitrary.…
We propose a new test of strong-field general relativity (GR) based on the universal interferometric signature of the black hole photon ring. The photon ring is a narrow ring-shaped feature, predicted by GR but not yet observed, that…
Over the last decades X-ray spectroscopy has proven to be a powerful tool for the estimation of black hole spin and several other key parameters in dozens of AGN and black hole X-ray binaries. In this White Paper, we discuss the…
We first present a short overview of X-ray probes of the black hole region of active galaxies (AGN) and then concentrate on the X-ray search for supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in optically non-active galaxies. The first part focuses on…
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…
For nearly a century, Einstein's theory of gravity has been the standard theory for describing gravitational phenomena in our universe. Along with its successes, limitations of the theory from theoretical (e.g., singularities) and…