Probing the strong gravity region of black holes with eXTP
: Bu, Qingcui; Bambi, Cosimo; Gou, Lijun; Xu, Yanjun; Uttley, Phil; De Rosa, Alessandra; Santangelo, Andrea; Zane, Silvia; Feng, Hua; Zhang, Shuang-Nan; Jin, Chichuan; Pan, Haiwu; Shu, Xinwen; Ursini, Francesco; Wang, Yanan; Wu, Jianfeng; You, Bei; Yuan, Yefei; Zhang, Wenda; Bianchi, Stefano; Dai, Lixin; Di Salvo, Tiziana; Dovčiak, Michal; Feng, Yuan; Guo, Hengxiao; Ingram, Adam; Jiang, Jiachen; Karas, Vladimír; Li, Dongyue; Liu, Honghui; Masteroserio, Guglielmo; Matt, Giorgio; Motta, Sara; Mou, Guobin; Nosirov, Abdurakhmon; Pan, Zhen; Qiao, Erlin; Shen, Rongfeng; Shui, Qingcang; Song, Yujia; Svoboda, Jiří; Tao, Lian; Veledina, Alexandra; Yan, Zhen; Zhao, Tong
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
: 2025
SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics and Astronomy
: 119504
: 68
: 1674-7348
: 1869-1927
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-025-2789-2
: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11433-025-2789-2
We present the novel capabilities of the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) mission to study the strong gravity region around stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binary systems and supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. eXTP can combine X-ray spectral, timing, and polarimetric techniques to study the accretion process near black holes, measure black hole masses and spins, and test Einstein’s theory of General Relativity in the strong field regime. We show how eXTP can improve the current measurements of black holes of existing X-ray missions and we discuss the scientific questions that can be addressed.
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This work was supported by China’s Space Origins Exploration Program. Shuang-Nan Zhang was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12333007), the International Partnership Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 113111KYSB20190020), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA15020100). Alexandra Veledina acknowledges support from the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 355672). Nordita was supported in part by NordForsk.
