2007/07/30 by Jeffrey E. McClintock, Ramesh Narayan, McClintock, Jeffrey E. +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0707.4492
openalex publication_date 2007/07/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We describe a program that we have embarked on to estimate the spins of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. We fit the continuum X-ray spectrum of the radiation from the accretion disk using the standard thin disk model, and extract the dimensionless spin parameter a* = a/M of the black hole as a parameter of the fit. We have obtained results on three systems, 4U 1543-47 (a* = 0.7-0.85), GRO J1655-40 (0.65-0.8), and GRS 1915+105 (0.98-1), and have nearly completed analysis of two additional systems. We anticipate expanding the sample of spin estimates to about a dozen over the next several years.