Testing General Relativity with the Reflection Spectrum of the Supermassive Black Hole in 1H0707-495
Abstract
Recently, we have extended the x-ray reflection model relxill to test the spacetime metric in the strong gravitational field of astrophysical black holes. In the present Letter, we employ this extended model to analyze XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and Swift data of the supermassive black hole in 1H0707-495 and test deviations from a Kerr metric parametrized by the Johannsen deformation parameter α13. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the spacetime metric around the black hole in 1H0707-495 is described by the Kerr solution.
- Publication:
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Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- February 2018
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1709.00219
- Bibcode:
- 2018PhRvL.120e1101C
- Keywords:
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- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- 10 pages, 7 figures. v2: refereed version