Iron Kα line of Kerr black holes with scalar hair
- Center for Field Theory and Particle Physics and Department of Physics, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, 200433 Shanghai (China)
- Programa de Matemática, Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz, Carrera 9 Bis No. 62-43, 110231 Bogotá (Colombia)
- Departamento de Física da Universidade de Aveiro and Center for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications (CIDMA), Campus de Santiago, 3810-183 Aveiro (Portugal)
Recently, a family of hairy black holes in 4-dimensional Einstein gravity minimally coupled to a complex, massive scalar field was discovered [1]. Besides the mass M and spin angular momentum J , these objects are characterized by a Noether charge Q , measuring the amount of scalar hair, which is not associated to a Gauss law and cannot be measured at spatial infinity. Introducing a dimensionless scalar hair parameter q , ranging from 0 to 1, we recover (a subset of) Kerr black holes for q = 0 and a family of rotating boson stars for q = 1. In the present paper, we explore the possibility of measuring q for astrophysical black holes with current and future X-ray missions. We study the iron Kα line expected in the reflection spectrum of such hairy black holes and we simulate observations with Suzaku and eXTP. As a proof of concept, we point out, by analyzing a sample of hairy black holes, that current observations can already constrain the scalar hair parameter q , because black holes with q close to 1 would have iron lines definitively different from those we observe in the available data. We conclude that a detailed scanning of the full space of solutions, together with data from the future X-ray missions, like eXTP, will be able to put relevant constraints on the astrophysical realization of Kerr black holes with scalar hair.
- OSTI ID:
- 22679590
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 07; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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