Testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis with the continuum-fitting and the iron line methods: the case of GRS 1915+105

Abstract

Abstract The continuum-fitting and the iron line methods are currently the two leading techniques for probing the strong gravity region around accreting black holes. In the present work, we test the Kerr black hole hypothesis with the stellar-mass black hole in GRS 1915+105 by analyzing five disk-dominated RXTE spectra and one reflection-dominated Suzaku spectrum. The combination of the constraints from the continuum-fitting and the iron line methods has the potential to provide more stringent tests of the Kerr metric. Our constraint on the Johannsen deformation parameter α 13 is -0.15 < α 13 < 0.14 at 3σ, where the Kerr metric is recovered when α 13 = 0.