A Short Review of Relativistic Iron Lines from Stellar-Mass Black Holes

Abstract

In this contribution, I briefly review recent progress in detecting and measuring the properties of relativistic iron lines observed in stellar-mass black hole systems, and the aspects of these lines that are most relevant to studies of similar lines in Seyfert-1 AGN. In particular, the lines observed in stellar-mass black holes are not complicated by complex low-energy absorption or partial-covering of the central engine, and strong lines are largely independent of the model used to fit the underlying broad-band continuum flux. Indeed, relativistic iron lines are the most robust diagnostic of black hole spin that is presently available to observers, with specific advantages over the systematics-plagued disk continuum. If accretion onto stellar-mass black holes simply scales with mass, then the widespread nature of lines in stellar-mass black holes may indicate that lines should be common in Seyfert-1 AGN, though perhaps harder to detect.

arXiv commentTo appear in Astron. Nachr. in the proceedings of the XMM-Newton workshop "Variable and Broad Iron Lines Around Black Holes", eds. A. C. Fabian and N. Schartel, 2006, Madrid, Spain

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• Leaving the ISCO: the inner edge of a black-hole accretion disk at various luminosities
• The Spectrum of the Black Hole X-ray Nova V404 Cygni in Quiescence as Measured by XMM-Newton
• An evolving broad iron line from the first Galactic ultraluminous X-ray pulsar Swift J0243.6+6124
• New Constraints on the Spin of the Black Hole Cygnus X-1 and the Physical Properties of its Accretion Disk Corona
• Searching for Narrow Emission Lines in X-ray Spectra: Computation and Methods
• Testing horizon topology with electromagnetic observations
• A variable magnetic disc wind in the black hole X-ray binary GRS 1915+105?