Measuring Black Hole Spin

Authors
Date and time
19 May 2011 - 00:00 Europe/London
Address

Aula

Talk language
English
Slides language
English
Serie number
0
Description

An astrophysical black hole is completely described with just two parameters: its mass and its dimensionless spin. A few dozen black holes have mass estimates, but until recently none had a reliable spin estimate. The first spins have now been measured for black holes in X-ray binaries. The talk will describe the method used to make these measurements and will discuss implications of the results obtained so far.