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Observational Constraints on Black Hole Spin
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Observational Constraints on Black Hole Spin
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The spin of a black hole is an important quantity to study, providing a window into the processes by which a black hole was born and grew. Further, spin can be a potent energy source for powering relativistic jets and energetic particle acceleration. In this review, I describe the techniques currently used to detect and measure the spins of black holes. It is shown that: (1) Two well understood techniques, X-ray reflection spectroscopy and thermal continuum fitting, can be used to measure the spins of black holes that are accreting at moderate rates. There is a rich set of other electromagnetic techniques allowing us to extend spin measurements to lower accretion rates. (2) Many accreting supermassive black holes are found to be rapidly-spinning, although a population of more slowly spinning black holes emerges at masses above $M>3\times 10^7\,M_\odot$ as expected from recent structure formation models. (3) Many accreting stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binary systems are rapidly spinning and must have been born in this state. (4) The advent of gravitational wave astronomy has enabled the detection of spin effects in merging binary black holes. Most of the pre-merger black holes are found to be slowly spinning, a notable exception being an object that may itself be a merger product. (5) The stark difference in spins between the black hole X-ray binary and the binary black hole populations shows that there is a diversity of formation mechanisms. Given the array of new electromagnetic and gravitational wave capabilities currently being planned, the future of black hole spin studies is bright.
Forward citations
Cited by 10 Pith papers
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Gravity Echoes from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
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The Radio Properties of Extreme Coronal Line Emitters: Constraints on the Sub-parsec Environment
About half of low-redshift ECLEs are radio-bright like TDEs/AGN; SED modeling of four shows the ECL gas is clumpy (f_V ~ 10^{-5}-10^{-2}) and spatially distinct from the radio-emitting region.
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Spin-Hair Induced Chaos of Spinning Test Particles in Rotating Hairy Black Holes
Spinning test particles around rotating hairy black holes show finite-time instability in localized regions of the (spin, hair-parameter) plane that reorganize the strong-field phase space compared to Kerr.
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High-Spin BBH Subpopulation from AGN Accretion
Mixture model analysis of LIGO data identifies a ~10% high-spin subpopulation with a1 ≈ 0.9 matching AGN accretion predictions, disfavoring hierarchical mergers at a1 ≈ 0.7 for that group.
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No Evidence for Superradiant Axions in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA GWTC-5 Binary Black Hole Spins
Hierarchical Bayesian analysis of GWTC-5 binary black hole spins finds no evidence for superradiant axions and excludes masses 1.7e-14 to 3.3e-12 eV at 95% CL.
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Constraining Kerr supermassive black hole properties using gravitational waves from inspiraling stellar-mass binary black holes
LISA observations of inspiraling stellar-mass BBHs around SMBHs can achieve relative uncertainties of 10^{-5} for SMBH mass and a few percent for spin in high-SNR cases.
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GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
GWTC-3 catalogs 90 compact binary coalescence events with p_astro > 0.5 from LIGO and Virgo's first three observing runs, including the first confident neutron star-black hole binaries.
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GWTC-2.1: Deep Extended Catalog of Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
GWTC-2.1 adds eight new high-significance compact binary coalescence events to the prior catalog, extending the observed black hole mass range and including candidates inside the pair-instability mass gap.
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Estimation of black hole spins in low-mass AGNs and comparison with other types of AGNs
Spins of low-mass AGN black holes decrease with mass, supporting mergers or chaotic accretion as growth mechanisms and suggesting an evolutionary sequence where spins first decrease then slowly increase.
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A Plunge into the Chasm: Surviving Tidal Effects in Kerr Spacetime
Tidal force calculations in Kerr spacetime show survival of plunge along polar axis is possible for supermassive rotating black holes but not stellar-mass ones.
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