Testing strong gravity with RELXILL_NK and the black hole in Ark 564

Main Author: Tripathi, Ashutosh
Format: info Proceeding eJournal
Bahasa: eng
Terbitan: , 2018
Subjects:
Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/1222799
Daftar Isi:
  • Einstein's gravity has been extensively tested in the weak field regime, mainly with experiments in the Solar System and observations of binary pulsars, and current data well agree with theoretical predictions. On the contrary, strong gravity is largely unexplored and there are a number of theories beyond Einstein's gravity having the same predictions for weak fields and presenting deviations only when gravity becomes strong. The best laboratory for testing strong gravity is the spacetime around astrophysical black holes. X-ray reflection spectroscopy can be a powerful tool to probe the strong gravity region around astrophysical black holes and test the nature of these objects. In this talk, I will introduce RELXILL_NK, which is the first XSPEC reflection model to test Einstein's gravity in the strong field regime, and I will present the constraints on possible deviations from Einstein's gravity that I have obtained by analyzing Suzaku data of Ark 564.