Browsing by Author "McClintock, Jeffrey"

Now showing items 1-20 of 20

    • The Black Hole Mass Distribution in the Galaxy 

      Özel, Feryal; Psaltis, Dimitrios; Narayan, Ramesh; McClintock, Jeffrey E. (IOP Publishing, 2010)
      We use dynamical mass measurements of 16 black holes in transient low-mass X-ray binaries to infer the stellar black hole mass distribution in the parent population. We find that the observations are best described by a ...

    • Black Hole Spin via Continuum Fitting and the Role of Spin in Powering Transient Jets 

      McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Narayan, Ramesh; Steiner, James (Springer Science + Business Media, 2013)
      The spins of ten stellar black holes have been measured using the continuum- fitting method. These black holes are located in two distinct classes of X-ray binary systems, one that is persistently X-ray bright and another ...

    • The Bright Side of Black Holes: Radiation From Black Hole Accretion Disks 

      Zhu, Yucong (2015-05-15)
      An understanding of radiation is paramount for connecting observations of accretion disks with the theory of black holes. In this thesis, we explore via radiative transfer postprocessing calculations the observational ...

    • The constant inner-disk radius of LMC X-3: A basis for measuring black hole spin 

      Steiner, James; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Remillard, Ronald A.; Gou, Lijun; Yamada, Shin; Narayan, Ramesh (IOP Publishing, 2010)
      he black hole binary system LMC X-3 has been observed by virtually every X-ray mission since the inception of X-ray astronomy. Among the persistent sources, LMC X-3 is uniquely both habitually soft and highly variable. ...

    • A Determination of the Spin of the Black Hole Primary in LMC X-1 

      Gou, Lijun; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Liu, Jifeng; Narayan, Ramesh; Steiner, James; Remillard, Ronald A.; Orosz, Jerome A.; Davis, Shane W.; Ebisawa, Ken; Schlegel, Eric M. (IOP Publishing, 2009)
      The first extragalactic X-ray binary, LMC X-1, was discovered in 1969. In the 1980s, its compact primary was established as the fourth dynamical black hole candidate. Recently, we published accurate values for the mass of ...

    • The Extreme Spin of the Black Hole in Cygnus X-1 

      Gou, Lijun; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Reid, Mark J.; Orosz, Jerome A.; Steiner, James F.; Narayan, Ramesh; Xiang, Jingen; Remillard, Ronald A.; Arnaud, Keith A.; Davis, Shane W. (IOP Publishing, 2011)
      The compact primary in the X-ray binary Cygnus X-1 was the first black hole to be established via dynamical observations. We have recently determined accurate values for its mass and distance, and for the orbital inclination ...

    • The eye of the storm: light from the inner plunging region of black hole accretion discs 

      Zhu, Yucong; Davis, Shane W.; Narayan, Ramesh; Kulkarni, Akshay K.; Penna, Robert Francis; McClintock, Jeffrey E. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2012)
      It is generally thought that the light coming from the inner plunging region of black hole accretion discs contributes negligibly to the disc's overall spectrum, i.e. the plunging fluid is swallowed by the black hole before ...

    • The Mass of the Black Hole in Cygnus X-1 

      Orosz, Jerome A.; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Aufdenberg, Jason P.; Remillard, Ronald A.; Reid, Mark J.; Narayan, Ramesh; Gou, Lijun (IOP Publishing, 2011)
      Cygnus X-1 is a binary star system that is comprised of a black hole and a massive giant companion star in a tight orbit. Building on our accurate distance measurement reported in the preceding paper, we first determine ...

    • Measuring Black Hole Spin by the Continuum-Fitting Method: Effect of Deviations from the Novikov-Thorne Disc Model 

      Kulkarni, Akshay K.; Penna, Robert Francis; Shcherbakov, Roman V.; Steiner, James Francis; Narayan, Ramesh; Sadowski, Aleksander; Zhu, Yucong; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Davis, Shane W.; McKinney, Jonathan C. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2011)
      The X-ray spectra of accretion discs of eight stellar mass black holes have been analysed to date using the thermal continuum-fitting method, and the spectral fits have been used to estimate the spin parameters of the black ...

    • Measuring the spins of accreting black holes 

      McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Narayan, Ramesh; Davis, Shane W.; Gou, Lijun; Kulkarni, Akshay; Orosz, Jerome A; Penna, Robert Francis; Remillard, Ronald A; Steiner, James Francis (IOP Publishing, 2011)
      A typical galaxy is thought to contain tens of millions of stellar-mass black holes, the collapsed remnants of once massive stars, and a single nuclear supermassive black hole. Both classes of black holes accrete gas from ...

    • Measuring the Spins of Stellar Black Holes: A Progress Report 

      McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Narayan, Ramesh; Gou, L.; Liu, J.; Penna, R; Steiner, J; Comastri, A.; Angelini, L.; Cappi, Marina Christine (American Institute of Physics, 2010)
      We use the Novikov-Thorne thin disk model to fit the thermal continuum X-ray spectra of black hole X-ray binaries, and thereby extract the dimensionless spin parameter a∗=a/M of the black hole as a parameter of the fit. ...

    • Observational evidence for a correlation between jet power and black hole spin 

      Narayan, Ramesh; McClintock, Jeffrey E. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2012)
      We show that the 5-GHz radio flux of transient ballistic jets in black hole binaries correlates with the dimensionless black hole spin parameter a* estimated via the continuum-fitting method. The data suggest that jet power ...

    • A Simple Comptonization Model 

      Steiner, James; Narayan, Ramesh; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Ebisawa, Ken (IOP Publishing, 2009)
      We present an empirical model of Comptonization for fitting the spectra of X-ray binaries. This model, "simpl", has been developed as a package implemented in XSPEC. With only two free parameters, simpl is competitive as ...

    • Simulations of magnetized discs around black holes: Effects of black hole spin, disc thickness and magnetic field geometry 

      Penna, Robert; McKinney, Jonathan C.; Narayan, Ramesh; Tchekhovskoy, Alexander; Shafee, Rebecca; McClintock, Jeffrey E. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2010)
      The standard general relativistic model of a razor-thin accretion disc around a black hole, developed by Novikov & Thorne (NT) in 1973, assumes the shear stress vanishes at theradius of the innermost stable circular orbit ...

    • Spin Measurements of Accreting Black Holes: A Foundation for X-Ray Continuum Fitting 

      Steiner, James (2013-01-02)
      Remarkably, an astrophysical black hole has only two attributes: its mass and its spin angular momentum. Spin is often associated with the exotic behavior that black holes manifest such as the production of relativistic ...

    • The Spin of the Black Hole in the Soft X-Ray Transient A0620-00 

      Gou, Lijun; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Steiner, James; Narayan, Ramesh; Cantrell, Andrew G.; Bailyn, Charles D.; Orosz, Jerome A. (IOP Publishing, 2010)
      During its year-long outburst in 1975–76, the transient source A0620–00 reached an intensity of 50 Crab, an all-time record for any X-ray binary. The source has been quiescent since then. We have recently determined accurate ...

    • The spin of the black hole microquasar XTE J1550−564 via the continuum-fitting and Fe-line methods 

      Steiner, James F.; Reis, Rubens C.; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, Ronald A.; Orosz, Jerome A.; Gou, Lijun; Fabian, Andrew C.; Torres, Manuel A. P. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2011)
      We measure the spin of XTE J1550-564 in two ways: by modelling the thermal continuum spectrum of the accretion disc, and independently by modeling the broad red wing of the reflection fluorescence Fe-K line. We find that ...

    • Testing Slim-Disk Models on the Thermal Spectra of LMC X-3 

      Straub, O.; Bursa, M.; Sadowski, Aleksander; Steiner, James Francis; Abramowicz, M. A.; Kluźniak, W.; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, R. A. (EDP Sciences, 2011)
      Slim-disk models describe advective accretion flows at high luminosities, while reducing to the standard thin disk form in the low luminosity limit. We have developed a new spectral model, slimbb, within the framework of ...

    • The Trigonometric Parallax of Cygnus X-1 

      Reid, Mark J.; McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Narayan, Ramesh; Gou, Lijun; Remillard, Ronald A.; Orosz, Jerome A. (IOP Publishing, 2011)
      We report a direct and accurate measurement of the distance to the X-ray binary Cygnus X-1, which contains the first black hole to be discovered. The distance of 1.86+0.12 – 0.11 kpc was obtained from a trigonometric ...

    • Viscous Torque and Dissipation in the Inner Regions of a Thin Accretion Disk: Implications for Measuring Black Hole Spin 

      Shafee, Rebecca; Narayan, Ramesh; McClintock, Jeffrey E. (IOP Publishing, 2008)
      We consider a simple Newtonian model of a steady accretion disk around a black hole. The model is based on height-integrated hydrodynamic equations, -viscosity, and a pseudo-Newtonian potential which results in an innermost ...