FP7 SPACE – call 5: SPA.2012.2.1-01 Exploitation of Science and Exploration Data Proposal: 312789 - StrongGravity Probing Strong Gravity by Black Holes Across the Range of Masses Coordinator: Astronomical Institute, Academy of Sciences Czech Republic (AsU) – Michal Dovčiak Partners: CNRS and UNISTRA (France) UNIROMA3 (Italy) UCAM (United Kingdom) CSIC (Spain) UCO (Germany) CAMK (Poland)
Outline of the presentation: • Scientific and technical quality • Concept and objectives • Progress beyond the state of the art • S/T methodology and associated work plan • Implementation • Management structure and procedures • Individual participants • Consortium as a whole • Resources to be committed • Impacts
Concept and objectives – Black holes at different angular momenta Einstein's field equation → existence of Black Holes (BH) ● Astrophysical Black Holes → mass M ● → angular momentum (spin) a BHs according to mass → stellar-mass BHs ● → supermassive BHs, 10 6 –10 9 M sol → intermediate mass BHs (ULX ?) Angular momentum per unit mass – spin a : between 0 and 1 ● → event horizon between 1 and 2 → ISCO – Innermost Stable Circular Orbit between 1 and 9 → differences visible very close to the centre Why to measure the spin (and spin distribution among BHs) ● → information on supernovae and hypernovae explosions → growth history → accretion versus mergers
Concept and objectives – Black holes at different angular momenta Our goal: ● → determine in combined theoretical and observational effort the so far most accurate and robust census of the BH spin distribution in the local universe → develop new analytical tools (General Relativity, radiative transfer effects) → apply these new tools to observational data from archives of European space-based and ground-based observatories or obtained in new observational campaigns
Progress beyond the state of the art – AGN Active Galactic Nuclei ● → radio galaxies, Seyfert galaxies, Quasars, … Structure of AGN
Progress beyond the state of the art – AGN ● Innermost regions where X-rays are produced sketch of the system spectral components → accretion disc (seed photons, reflection) → hot corona (primary X-ray source) → distant torus (narrow spectral line) → warm absorbers (ionized winds)
Progress beyond the state of the art – AGN Spin determination using ● → spin – ISCO relation → relativistically broadened iron Kα spectral line Difficulties ● → interpretation with complex absorption model partially covering the primary X-ray source → complexity of the system
Progress beyond the state of the art – Sgr A* The nearest supermassive Black Hole ● → in the centre of our own galaxy Mass ~ 4.4x10 6 M sol (from orbits of nearby stars) ● Very low luminosity → a probe to low accretion rate system ● with low radiation efficiency NIR and X-ray flares around 100 min. long with < 10 min. lag ● (orbiting spot? ejected blob?) Importance of multi-wavelength observations ● Variability on time-scales of ISCO period ● NIR polarization data available ●
Advances beyond the state of the art – AGN On the theoretical side: ● → improvement in modeling of all spectral components → the primary component: special rel. Comptonization code → the refl. component: different ionization states, modeling of lags between primary and reflected emission → the iron line emission: realistic emissivity laws → the warm absorber: treating absorption and emission lines self-consistently → develop and use 3D polarization code for modeling the light curves and polarized emission of Sgr A* On the observational side: ● → explore the public archives and propose new observations with the current and near-future X-ray facilities → to solve the ambiguity between reflection and absorption model → determine more robustly the iron line profile and the spin → search for time lags between primary and refl. components
Progress beyond the state of the art – GBHs Stellar-mass BHs in X-ray binary systems ● → only in our own galaxy (exception: ULX) → Black Hole, donor star, accretion disc → different spectral states (low hard, high soft, very high,...) → mass scaling (connection to AGN) → spin determination: ● Thermal emission ● Iron line ● QPOs ● polarimetry → spin-jet relation
Advances beyond the state of the art – GBHs On the theoretical side: ● → improvement on present disc emission models → disc self-irradiation → advection processes → properties of the disc corona → refine QPO models → GR effects correctly accounted for in all of these models On the observational side: ● → explore the public archives and propose new observations with the current and near-future X-ray facilities → measure the spin with different methods
S/T methodology and associated work plan
30 40 97 23 43 40 64 28 38 47 26 57 18 12
S/T methodology and associated work plan WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 30 23 11 4 0 8 2 5 4 21 5 14 2 6 135 AsU 0 9 14 2 5 3 3 0 0 3 16 14 0 1 70 CNRS UNI 0 2 32 17 6 0 15 0 0 0 3 0 0 1 76 ROMA3 0 0 15 0 0 8 24 0 0 0 0 10 0 1 58 UCAM 0 6 18 0 0 21 20 0 0 0 0 6 0 1 72 CSIC 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 23 34 0 0 0 0 1 58 UCO 0 0 7 0 32 0 0 0 0 23 2 13 16 1 94 CAMK 30 40 97 23 43 40 64 28 38 47 26 57 18 12 563 TOTAL
S/T methodology and associated work plan Deliverables Management ● → minutes from project meetings → project website – internal and external → list of teams and published papers → reports Research ● → numerical codes → models in XSPEC → computed tables → separate or as table models in XSPEC → observation proposals, archive search, data reduction, analysis and modeling → presentations on conferences → scientific papers Public outreach ● → web pages for scientific community → web pages for general public → public lectures
Possible risks in the project → we believe that our proposal has very low risks → all tasks require expertise that is available within the consortium → the most important external factors are on the observational side: → we have to rely → on the efficient prosecution over the next years of the current X-ray facilities (XMM-Newton, whose operations are at the moment guaranteed till 2014 but with very good chances for further extensions) → on the success of programmed future X-ray missions like NuSTAR, ASTRO-H and GEMS (we note here that the rate of failure in the past was quite small) → we need the success of our proposals for observations with current and future facilities – in the past we have been quite successful in this respect
Recommend
More recommend
