Observing the effects of the event horizon in black holes

Chris Done, Marek Gierlinski

Published 2002-11-11, updated 2003-04-01Version 3

The key difference between neutron stars and black holes is the presence/absence of a solid surface. Recent attempts to detect this difference have concentrated on the quiescent luminosity, but here these sources are faint and difficult to observe. Instead we look at these sources when they are bright, and show that there is a clear difference between black holes and neutron stars in the evolution of their X-ray spectra which is due to the presence of a surface in the neutron stars. We also show that there is a type of X-ray spectrum which is only seen from black holes, making it a good diagnostic for the nature of new transient sources.