Attempt to find a correlation between the spin of stellar-mass black hole candidates and the power of steady jets: relaxing the Kerr black hole hypothesis

Abstract

The rotational energy of a black hole can be extracted via the Blandford-Znajek mechanism and numerical simulations suggest a strong dependence of the power of the produced jet on the black hole spin. A recent study has found no evidence for a correlation between the spin and the power of steady jets. If the measurements of the spin and of the jet power are correct, it leads one to conclude that steady jets are not powered by the black hole spin. In this paper, I explore another possibility: I assume that steady jets are powered by the spin and I check if current observations can be explained if astrophysical black hole candidates are not the Kerr black hole predicted by General Relativity. It turns out that this scenario might indeed be possible. While such a possibility is surely quite speculative, it is definitively intriguing and can be seriously tested when future more accurate measurements will be available.

9 pages, 5 figures. v2: refereed version significantly longer. v3: "Harvard group" replaced by "Harvard-Smithsonian CfA group" in the text

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• Test bodies and naked singularities: is the self-force the cosmic censor?
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• Probing the space-time geometry around black hole candidates with the resonance models for high-frequency QPOs and comparison with the continuum-fitting method
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Cited by in corpus (23)

• Rotating regular black holes
• Testing the space-time geometry around black hole candidates with the analysis of the broad K$\alpha$ iron line
• Probing the space-time geometry around black hole candidates with the resonance models for high-frequency QPOs and comparison with the continuum-fitting method
• Constraints on the spacetime geometry around 10 stellar-mass black hole candidates from the disk's thermal spectrum
• Broad K$\alpha$ iron line from accretion disks around traversable wormholes
• Shadows of CPR black holes and tests of the Kerr metric
• Using iron line reverberation and spectroscopy to distinguish Kerr and non-Kerr black holes
• Testing the existence of regions of stable orbits at small radii around black hole candidates
• XSPEC model for testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis using the continuum-fitting method
• Energy Extraction via Magnetic Reconnection in the Ergosphere of a rotating non-Kerr Black Hole
• Note on the Cardoso-Pani-Rico parametrization to test the Kerr black hole hypothesis
• Disformal transformation of stationary and axisymmetric solutions in modified gravity
• Probing bumblebee gravity with black hole X-ray data
• Testing a class of non-Kerr metrics with hot spots orbiting SgrA${}^{\ast }$
• Radiation processes in the vicinity of non-Schwarzschild and non-Kerr black holes
• Analytic properties of force-free jets in the Kerr spacetime -- III: uniform field solution
• Kerr-Taub-NUT spacetime to explain the jet power and the radiative efficiency of astrophysical black holes
• Blandford-Znajek Process in Quadratic Gravity
• Blandford-Znajek jets in MOdified Gravity
• Constraining the Cardoso-Pani-Rico metric with future observations of SgrA${}^{\ast }$
• Attempt to explain black hole spin in X-ray binaries with new physics
• On the Universality of Energy Extraction from Black Hole Spacetimes
• Observed jet power and radiative efficiency of black hole candidates in Kerr + PFDM model