Advection-Dominated Accretion and Black Hole Event Horizons

Abstract

The defining characteristic of a black hole is that it possesses an event horizon through which matter and energy can fall in but from which nothing escapes. Soft X-ray transients (SXTs), a class of X-ray binaries, appear to confirm this fundamental property of black holes. SXTs that are thought to contain accreting black holes display a large variation of luminosity between their bright and faint states, while SXTs with accreting neutron stars have a smaller variation. This difference is predicted if the former stars have horizons and the latter have normal surfaces.Comment: 11 pages, including 2 tables and 2 figures. To appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letter