Astronomy and Astrophysics Seminars

Are astrophysical black holes described by the Kerr metric?

by Dr. Sourabh Nampalliwar (Fudan university, Shanghai)

Thursday, April 27, 2017 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at D 405
Description
Black holes are ideal systems for testing strong gravity. Within Einstein's theory of gravity, astrophysical black holes are expected to be described by the Kerr metric, owing to the no hair theorem. I will talk about an X-ray reflection code that has been developed to test the Kerr nature of astrophysical black holes. The formalism uses a transfer function to separate the local spectrum and the spacetime effects. I will also discuss the application of this code to some simulations of current and future observations.