A Systematic View of Ten New Black Hole Spins

Abstract

The launch of NuSTAR and the increasing number of binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected through gravitational wave (GW) observations have exponentially advanced our understanding of black holes. Despite the simplicity owed to being fully described by their mass and angular momentum, black holes have remained mysterious laboratories that probe the most extreme environments in the Universe. While significant progress has been made in the recent decade, the distribution of spin in black holes has not yet been understood. In this work, we provide a systematic analysis of all known black holes in X-ray binary systems (XB) that have previously been observed by NuSTAR, but have not yet had a spin measurement using the "relativistic reflection" method obtained from that data. By looking at all the available archival NuSTAR data of these sources, we measure ten new black hole spins: IGR J17454-2919 -- $a=0.97^{+0.03}_{-0.17}$; GRS 1758-258 -- $a=0.991^{+0.007}_{-0.019}$; MAXI J1727-203 -- $a=0.986^{+0.012}_{-0.159}$; MAXI J0637-430 -- $a=0.97\pm0.02$; Swift J1753.5-0127 -- $a=0.997^{+0.001}_{-0.003}$; V4641 Sgr -- $a=0.86^{+0.04}_{-0.06}$; 4U 1543-47 -- $a=0.98^{+0.01}_{-0.02}$; 4U 1957+11 -- $a=0.95^{+0.02}_{-0.04}$; H 1743-322 -- $a=0.98^{+0.01}_{-0.02}$; MAXI J1820+070 -- $a=0.988^{+0.006}_{-0.028}$ (all uncertainties are at the $1σ$ confidence level). We discuss the implications of our measurements on the entire distribution of stellar mass black hole spins in XB, and we compare that with the spin distribution in BBH, finding that the two distributions are clearly in disagreement. Additionally, we discuss the implications of this work on our understanding of how the "relativistic reflection" spin measurement technique works, and discuss possible sources of systematic uncertainty that can bias our measurements.