April 11
Christopher Reynolds (Maryland)
The Astrophysics of Black Hole Spin
In
addition to providing vital clues as to the formation and evolution of black
holes, the spin of black holes may be an important energy source in the
Universe. Over the past couple of years, tremendous progress has been
made in the realm of observational measurements of spin. I will describe
these efforts with particular focus on the use of X-ray spectroscopy to probe
the spin of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN). I
shall describe results from the Suzaku AGN Spin
Survey, a Suzaku Key Project that targets five bright
and well-known AGN with observations of sufficient depth that black hole spin
can be assessed. For the first time, we are obtaining hints about the
distribution of spins across the population of supermassive black holes with
some interesting and unexpected consequences.