An Extreme Black Hole in the Recurrent X-Ray Transient XTE J2012+381

Abstract

The black hole (BH) candidate XTE J2012+381 underwent an outburst at the end of 2022. We analyzed 105 NICER observations and two NuSTAR observations of the source during the outburst. The NuSTAR observations of the M ∼ 10 M _⊙ BH indicate clear signs of relativistic disk reflection, which we modeled to measure a BH spin of $a={0.988}_{-0.030}^{+0.008}$ and an inclination of $\theta ={68}_{-11}^{+6}$ deg (1 σ statistical errors). In our analysis, we test an array of models and examine the effect of fitting NuSTAR spectra alone versus fitting simultaneously with NICER. We find that when the underlying continuum emission is properly accounted for, the reflected emission is similarly characterized by multiple models. We combined 52 NICER spectra to obtain a spectrum with an effective exposure of 190 ks in order to probe the presence of absorption lines that would be suggestive of disk winds, but the resulting features were not statistically significant. We discuss the implications of this measurement in relation to the overall BH spin distribution in X-ray binary systems.

Keywords

• Black holes
• Astrophysical black holes
• High energy astrophysics
• Accretion
• X-ray binary stars