A retrograde spin of the black hole in MAXI J1659--152

Abstract

We present the results of spectral analysis of the galactic black-hole binary MAXI J1659--152 in the rising phase of the outburst that lasted for about 65 days starting on 2010 September 25. The presence of a broad Fe line, verified by Monte-Carlo simulations, and coverage of a wide energy band by utilizing the combined spectral capabilities of XMM-Newton/EPIC-pn and RXTE/PCA allowed us to use a combination of reflection spectroscopy and continuum fitting methods to estimate the spin of the black hole. We explored the entire parameter range allowed by the present uncertainties on black-hole mass, inclination, and distance as well as the accretion rate. We show that for about 95 percentage of parameter space and very reasonable upper limits on mass accretion rate, the spin of the black hole has to be negative. This is the first clear detection of negative spin in a galactic black-hole binary.

Published in ApJL. 9 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• A Systematic View of Ten New Black Hole Spins
• Delimiting the black hole mass in the X-ray transient MAXI J1659-152 with H$\alpha$ spectroscopy
• A Dependable Distance Estimator to Black Hole Low-Mass X-ray Binaries
• Estimating the spin of the black hole candidate MAXI J1659-152 with the X-ray continuum-fitting method
• The spin measurement of MAXI J1348-630 using the Insight-HXMT data
• Broadband X-ray Spectroscopy and Estimation of Spin of the Galactic Black Hole Candidate GRS 1758-258
• PATOKA: Simulating Electromagnetic Observables of Black Hole Accretion