Bibcode
Fender, R. P.; Gallo, E.; Russell, D.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 406, Issue 3, pp. 1425-1434.
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8
2010
Citations
175
Refereed citations
144
Description
In this paper, we consider the reported measurements of black hole spin
for black hole X-ray binaries and compare them against the measurements
of jet power and speed across all accretion states in these systems. We
find no evidence for any correlation between the properties of the jets
and the reported spin measurements. These constraints are strongest in
the hard X-ray state, which is associated with a continuous powerful
jet. We are led to conclude that one or more of the following is
correct: (i) the calculated jet power and speed measurements are wrong,
(ii) the reported spin measurements are wrong and (iii) there is no
strong dependence of the jet properties on the black hole spin. In
addition to this lack of observational evidence for a relation between
the black hole spin and jet properties in stellar mass black holes, we
highlight the fact that there appear to be at least three different ways
in which the jet power and/or radiative efficiency from a black hole
X-ray binary may vary, two of which are certainly independent of spin
because they occur in the same source on relatively short time-scales
and the third which does not correlate with any reported measurements of
black hole spin. We briefly discuss how these findings may impact upon
interpretations of populations of active galactic nuclei in the context
of black hole spin and merger history.