Observational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe: Proceedings of a Conference held in Calcutta, India, January 10–17, 1998 PDF
Preview Observational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe: Proceedings of a Conference held in Calcutta, India, January 10–17, 1998
OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE FOR BLACK HOLES IN THE UNIVERSE ASTROPHYSICS AND SPACE SCIENCE LIBRARY VOLUME 234 Executive Committee w. B. BURTON, Ste"ewacht, Leiden, The Netherlands J. M. E. KUUPERS, Faculty of Science, Nijmegen, The Netherlands E. P. J. VAN DEN HEUVEL, Astronomical Institute, University ofA msterdam, The Netherlands H. VAN DER LAAN, Astronomical Institute, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Editorial Board I. APPENZELLER, Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Konigstuhl, Germany J. N. BAHCALL, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A. F. BERTOLA, Universita di Padova, Italy W. B. BURTON, Sterrewacht, Leiden, The Netherlands J. P. CASSINELLI, University ofW isconsin, Madison, U.S.A. C. J. CESARSKY, Centre d'Etudes de Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France O. ENGVOLD, Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, Norway J. M. E. KUUPERS, Faculty of Science, Nijmegen, The Netherlands R. McCRAY, University of Colorado, JILA, Boulder, U.S.A. P. G. MURDIN, Royal Greenwich Observatory, Cambridge, U.K. F. PACINI, Istituto Astronomia Arcetri, Firenze, Italy V. RADHAKRISHNAN, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore,India K. SATO, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan F. H. SHU, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. B. V. SOMOV, Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, Russia R. A. SUNYAEV, Space Research Institute, Moscow, Russia Y. TANAKA, Institute of Space & Astronautical Science, Kanagawa, Japan S. TREMAINE, Princeton University, U.S.A. E. P. J. VAN DEN HEUVEL, Astronomical Institute, University ofA msterdam, The Netherlands H. VAN DER LAAN,AstronomicalInstitute, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands N. O. WEISS, University of Cambridge, U.K. OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE FOR BLACK HOLES IN THE UNIVERSE Proceedings of a Conference held in Calcutta, India, January 10-17, 1998 Editedby SANDIP K. CHAKRABARTI S.N. Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Calcutta, India SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-94-010-5995-4 ISBN 978-94-011-4750-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-4750-7 Present estimate of the enclosed mass at the center of the Milky Way as a function of the projected distance (Ghez et al., this volume). In terms of the mass density of the Compact object, this is the strongest evidence of a black hoIe so far (Ho, this volume). Printed on acid-free paper AlI Rights Reserved © 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1999 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner Table of Contents Organizing Committees . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . Vlll Preface IX ACCRETION DISK THEORY: . FROM THE STANDARD MODEL UNTIL ADVECTION G.S. Bisnovatyi-Kogan 1 ACCRETION DISKS AROUND BLACK HOLES: TWENTY FIVE YEARS LATER Sandip K. Chakrabarti 19 VISCOSITY IN ACCRETION DISKS P.J. Wiita 49 SHOCK FORMATION IN ADIABATIC ACCRETION FLOWS AROUND A KERR BLACK HOLE Ju-Fu Lu 61 ROTATING ACCRETION FLOWS NEAR A BLACK HOLE: A NUMERICAL STUDY Dongsu Ryu 73 SIMULATIONS OF SHOCKS WITH SMOOTHED PARTICLES HYDRODYNAMICS METHOD D. Molteni, G. Gerardi, M.A. Valenza & G. LanzaJame 83 NUCLEOSYNTHESIS IN ADVECTIVE ACCRETION DISKS AROUND GALACTIC AND EXTRA-GALACTIC BLACK HOLES B. Mukhopadhyay 105 COMPUTATION OF MASS-OUTFLOW RATES FROM ADVECTIVE ACCRETION DISKS AROUND BLACK HOLES Tapas K. Das 113 BLACK HOLE SOLUTIONS OF EINSTEIN'S EQUATIONS AN OVERVIEW Thomas Zannias 123 v WATER MEGA MASERS IN NGC4258 M. Miyoshi 141 SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES IN GALACTIC NUCLEI - OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE AND SOME ASTROPHYSICAL CONSEQUENCES Luis C. Ho ..................... ......................... 157 TIDAL DISRUPTION OF A STAR BY A MASSIVE BLACK HOLE Hyung Mok Lee .......................................... 187 MULTIFREQUENCY MONITORING OF BLAZARS Leo O. 'I'akalo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 THE OJ287 SUPERMASSIVE BINARY BLACK HOLE MODEL AND THE NEW UNIFIED SCHEME FOR THE AGNs Aimo K. Sillanpaa 209 HIGH ENERGY GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM BLAZARS: EGRET OBSERVATIONS R. Mukherjee 215 STRONG GRAVITY AND X-RAY SPECTROSCOPY A. Maciolek-Niedzwiecki & P. Magdziarz 231 MY INVOLVEMENT IN THE EARLY YEARS OF RADIO ASTRONOMY M.K. Das Gupta 241 RADIO OBSERVATIONS OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI: EVIDENCE FOR DISKS AND BLACK HOLES D.l. Saiki a 247 HIGH PROPER MOTION STARS IN THE VICINITY OF Sgr A *: EVIDENCE FOR A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF OUR GALAXY A.M. Ghez, B.L. Klein, M. Morris & E.E. Becklin 265 BLACK HOLES IN OUR GALAXY DYNAMICAL EVIDENCE Phil Charles 279 VI OUTBURSTS IN BLACK HOLE X-RAY TRANSIENTS: CLUES FROM MULTIWAVELENGTH OBSERVATIONS Carole A. Haswell ,....................................... 293 THE HIGH-ENERGY SPECTRA OF ACCRETING BLACK HOLES: VIEWING THE MATTER AS IT DISAPPEARS DOWN THE SCHWARZSCHILD DRAIN L. G. Titarchuk, C.R. Shrader, S. Trudolyubov, M. Revnivtsev & K. Borozdin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 X-RAY SPECTRAL VARIABILITY OF BLACK HOLE BINARIES M. Gilfanov, E. Churazov & R. Sunyaev 319 QUASI-PERIODIC OSCILLATIONS IN THE X-RAY FLUX FROM THE BLACK HOLE CANDIDATES Tadayasu Dotani 341 X-RAY PROPERTIES OF GRS 1915+105 B. Paul 351 X-RAY OBSERVATION OF BLACK HOLE NOVAE S. Kitamoto 369 A TRANSITION DISK MODEL FIT TO CYGNUS X-I R. Misra 385 ARE THE X-RAYS COMING FROM THE INSIDE OF THE ACCRETION DISK OF THE BLACK HOLE? H. Negoro 389 List of Participants 395 Author Index 399 Vll Scientific Advisory Committee Prof. Roger D. Blandford (Caltech, USA) Prof. Matio Livio (STScI, USA) Prof. Paul J. Wiita (GSU, USA) Prof. Lev G. Titarchuk (NASAjGSFC, USA) Prof. Hyung Mok Lee (Pusan, Korea) Prof. Prahlad C. Agrawal (TIFR, India) Prof. Chanchal K. Majumdar (SNBNCBS, India) Prof. Arun K. Sen (ECRA, India) Local Organizing Committee: Prof. Sandip .K. Chakrabarti (SNBNCBS, Convener) Dr. Tushar K. Das (ECRA) Dr. Narayan Banerjee (Jadavpur University). Dr. Amitabha Lahiri (SNBNCBS) Mr. Tapas K. Das (SNBNCBS) Mr. Indranil Chattopadhyay (SNBNCBS) Mr. Arnab Ray (SNBNCBS) Mr. Banibrata Mukhopadhyay (SNBNCBS) V111 PREFACE Black Holes are probably the most enigmatic objects in the whole of spacetime. They are simple to describe, yet most difficult to detect. We do not know for sure if we heard the 'birth cry' of a black hole (we are probably not even sure how the 'cry' would 'sound' like). We have not witnessed the 'agony' of a dying black hole. Neither have we de tected a 'living' one with a hundred percent certainty. But we are sure that they should exist simply because the fundamental laws of Nature tell us so. Our common faith and conviction in these laws bring us to gether in various conferences and symposia to exchange notes and ideas to see how far we have progressed to detect these enigmatic objects. With the advent of new theoretical understanding of the nature of hy drodynamic and radiative solutions close to the black holes, together with recent observations with very high resolution instruments aboard spacecrafts, it was felt that it is about time that these new results be looked at more closely. With this idea the conference on 'Obser vational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe' was organized to seriously debate and discuss on the sole issue of whether black holes have been detected or not. This was the first occasion where expert Astrophysicists from around the world gathered with this one point agenda. This Edited Volume is the fruit of this gathering. The year of 1998, the present year, is very special. This year celebrates one hundred years of discovery of electrons, seventy-five years of discovery of Compton effect, fifty years of pion discovery, twenty-five years of asymptotic freedom, and more importantly (to us, astrophysicists at least) twenty five years of the publications of two very important papers which defined standard accretion disks. These sentiments have been reflected in some of the articles in this book. Especially, it is noted that perhaps a special type of Compton scattering from rapidly moving matter brings the signatures of the disappearing matter into a black hole to us. The venue of the conference, namely Calcutta, is also very special. On 20th of June, 1756, in a hot summer day, an incident took place in a dark, 18 feet long cubic chamber in Calcutta. Around 40 British soldiers were suffocated to their end. Since then this incident is known as the 'Black Hole of Calcutta incident' in English literature. When the 'collapsars' were termed as 'Black Holes' in 1967, J.A. Wheeler of IX Princeton probably had this one way chamber in mind. It is no coin cidence that people in Calcutta would be curious about the existence of celestial black holes. The conference was the third and final part of a three-part work shop entitled 'Multiwavelength Studies of Stars and Compact Objects' which took place during January 1-17, 1998. The lectures were ar ranged in a make-shift lecture hall in a partially complete building of S.N. Bose National Centre forBasic Sciences, located at a newly devel oped area of Calcutta metropolis (Salt Lake) where the Astrophysics department was barely one year old. The participants, thirty-two from abroad and rest from various parts of India stayed in the guest house of the Centre. The living and dining arrangements were modest. But all these did not dampen the spirit of the conference. The conference was covered by at least half-a-dozen national newspapers. All India Radio and national and provincial television stations broadcast inter views and news-worthy clips from the conference. There was a very lively debate on whether black holes exist or not in a panel consist ing of G.B. Kogan (Chair), L.G. Titarchuk, M. Miyoshi, M. Gilfanov, S.K. Chakrabarti and A. Sillanpaa. There was also an official press conference at the Press Club of India. Towards the end, the partici pants enjoyed a launch-trip to Sundarbans, the land of Royal Bengal Tigers. In the concluding session on the launch, after being satisfied with only the fresh footsteps of the tigers, one participant suggested that the search for tigers is no different from the search for black holes - one knows that they are there, but one can't really find them! Close encounter to either of these two objects is clearly one way and one does not really want to come close to either of them. In both the cases, participants had to be satisfied with indirect evidences only. I mention this witty remark (made in the midst of wilderness) of the participant to impress on the fact that the participants never actually lost sight of the original goal of the conference! That a large number of new results were presented at the confer ence could be judged from the quality of the papers in this book. Most of the speakers of the third part of the Workshop (namely, the confer ence) and a few of the selected ones from the first two parts (whose talks were relevant to the subject matter of this book) contributed to this book. Dr. Ghez, Dr. Charles, Dr. Dotani and Dr. Saikia could not attend the conference despite their strong wishes. They were re- x
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