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X-RAY BINARIES

A new window on black hole accretion

Nature Astronomy volume 2, pages 623–624 (2018)Cite this article

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Recent polarization measurements of the stellar-mass black hole in Cygnus X-1 reveal an extended corona in the inner parts of the accretion flow and open the path for a new era in high-energy astrophysics.

Unveiling the physical conditions close to the event horizon of accreting black holes is a major astrophysical challenge. In this issue of Nature Astronomy, Maxime Chauvin and collaborators1 demonstrate that the technique of X-ray polarimetry may be the key to this goal. Their hard X-ray polarization measurements of the X-ray binary (XRB) Cygnus X-1 put radically new constraints on the geometry of the innermost accretion structures and rule out some of the scenarios proposed to describe the fate of gas falling onto this black hole.

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Fig. 1: Examples of geometries proposed for the inner accretion flow in XRBs and AGNs.

central image courtesy of Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

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  1. Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology, Toulouse, France

    Julien Malzac

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  1. Julien Malzac
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Correspondence to Julien Malzac.

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Malzac, J. A new window on black hole accretion. Nat Astron 2, 623–624 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0507-z

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