PRIMARY BLACK HOLE SPIN IN OJ 287 AS DETERMINED BY THE GENERAL RELATIVITY CENTENARY FLARE
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS, cilt.819, sa.2, 2016 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 819 Sayı: 2
- Basım Tarihi: 2016
- Doi Numarası: 10.3847/2041-8205/819/2/l37
- Dergi Adı: ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
- Anahtar Kelimeler: black hole physics, quasars: general, quasars: individual (OJ 287), quasars: supermassive black holes
- Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
OJ 287 is a quasi-periodic quasar with roughly 12 year optical cycles. It displays prominent outbursts that are predictable in a binary black hole model. The model predicted a major optical outburst in 2015 December. We found that the outburst did occur within the expected time range, peaking on 2015 December 5 at magnitude 12.9 in the optical R-band. Based on Swift/XRT satellite measurements and optical polarization data, we find that it included a major thermal component. Its timing provides an accurate estimate for the spin of the primary black hole, chi = 0.313 +/- 0.01. The present outburst also confirms the established general relativistic properties of the system such as the loss of orbital energy to gravitational radiation at the 2% accuracy level, and it opens up the possibility of testing the black hole no-hair theorem with 10% accuracy during the present decade.