How to constrain mass and spin of supermassive black holes through their disk emission

Abstract

We investigate the global properties of the radiation emitted by the accretion disk around Kerr black holes. Using the Kerr blackbody (KERRBB) numerical model, we build an analytic approximation of the disk emission features focusing on the pattern of the produced radiation as a function of the black hole spin, mass, accretion rate and viewing angle. The assumption of having a geometrically thin disk limits our analysis to systems emitting below ~0.3 of the Eddington luminosity. We apply this analytical model to four blazars (whose jets are pointing at us) at high redshift that show clear signatures of disk emission. For them, we derive the black hole masses as a function of spin. If these jetted sources are powered by the black hole rotation, they must have high spin values, further constraining their masses.

13 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publications in A&A

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• The central engine of the highest redshift blazar
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• XMM-Newton observation of the ultraluminous quasar SDSS J010013.02+280225.8 at redshift 6.326
• Black hole mass and spin estimates of the most distant quasars
• Estimating black hole masses: Accretion disk fitting versus reverberation mapping and single epoch
• Discovery of the most luminous quasar of the last 9 Gyr
• Dynamical evolution of massive black hole pairs in the presence of spin-dependent radiative feedback
• Main trends of the quasar main sequence -- effect of viewing angle
• Multi-wavelength properties of three new radio-powerful $z\sim 5.6$ quasi-stellar objects discovered from RACS
• Characterising SMSS J2157--3602, the most luminous known quasar, with accretion disc models
• On the connection between AGN radiative feedback and massive black hole spin
• X-ray constraints on the spectral energy distribution of the $z=5.18$ blazar SDSS J013127.34-032100.1
• AGN mass estimates in large spectroscopic surveys: the effect of host galaxy light
• AGN anisotropic radiative feedback set by black hole spin
• Relativistic Reflection Modeling in AGN and Related Variability from PCA: A Brief Review
• A simplified approach for reproducing fully relativistic spectra in X-ray binary systems: Application to Cygnus X-1
• Partial alignment between jets and megamasers: Coherent versus selective accretion
• The disk-torus system in active galactic nuclei: possible evidence of highly spinning black holes
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• NVSS J151002+570243: accretion and spin of a z > 4 Fermi detected blazar
• Gaia-supported re-discovery of a remarkable weak line quasar from a variability and proper motion survey