Testing the Kerr Black Hole Hypothesis with GX 339-4 by a combined analysis of its thermal spectrum and reflection features

Ashutosh Tripathi, Askar B. Abdikamalov, Dimitry Ayzenberg, Cosimo Bambi, Victoria Grinberg, Menglei Zhou

Published 2020-10-26Version 1

We analyze simultaneous observations with NuSTAR and Swift of the black hole binary GX 339-4 in which we clearly detect both a strong thermal component and prominent relativistic reflection features. We employ NKBB and RELXILL_NK, which are the state of the art of, respectively, the thermal and reflection models to test the Kerr black hole hypothesis. We obtain unprecedented precise measurements of the Johannsen deformation parameter $\alpha_{13}$: $\alpha_{13} = -0.012_{-0.039}^{+0.011}$ (lamppost coronal geometry) and $\alpha_{13} = -0.010_{-0.018}^{+0.024}$ (broken power-law emissivity profile) at a 90% confidence level, where the Kerr metric corresponds to $\alpha_{13} = 0$. We investigate the systematic uncertainties by fitting the data with different models.