Stellar-Mass Galactic Black Hole Science with Constellation-X
Jon Miller
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
jmmiller@cfa.harvard.edu
Additional authors:
Stellar-mass Galactic black holes represent accessible laboratories for probing relativistic environments. In active accretion phases, relativistically-skewed iron emission lines (similar to those seen in supermassive black hole X-ray spectra) and X-ray high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) can be used to probe the innermost accretion flow, and even to provide evidence of black hole spin. During inactive or "quiescent" phases, these black holes appear to be under-luminous relative to neutron stars, perhaps indicating the lack of a solid surface. I will review these and other Chandra, XMM-Newton, and RXTE results concerning relativistic effects in Galactic black hole systems, but I will spend an equal part of the talk discussing simulated Constellation-X observations to illustrate the dramatic improvements possible with this mission.
