A High-Frequency Doppler Feature in the Power Spectra of Simulated GRMHD Black Hole Accretion Disks

Abstract

Black hole binaries exhibit a wide range of variability phenomena, from large-scale state changes to broadband noise and quasi-periodic oscillations, but the physical nature of much of this variability is poorly understood. We examine the variability properties of three GRMHD simulations of thin accretion disks around black holes of varying spin, producing light curves and power spectra as would be seen by observers. We find that the simulated power spectra show a broad feature at high frequency, which increases in amplitude with the inclination of the observer. We show that this high-frequency feature is a product of the Doppler effect and that its location is a function of the mass and spin of the black hole. This Doppler feature demonstrates that power spectral properties of the accretion disk can be tied to, and potentially used to determine, physical properties of the black hole.

12 pages, 10 figures, accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Solutions to the relativistic precession model
• Looking for the underlying cause of black hole X-ray variability in GRMHD simulations
• Blazar Variability From Turbulence in Jets Launched by Magnetically Arrested Accretion Flows
• Viscous Driving of Global Oscillations in Accretion Discs Around Black Holes
• Inertial-Acoustic Oscillations of Black-Hole Accretion Discs with Large-Scale Poloidal Magnetic Fields