Testing General Relativity with X-ray reflection spectroscopy: The Konoplya-Rezzolla-Zhidenko parametrization

Abstract

X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a promising technique for testing general relativity in the strong field regime, as it can be used to test the Kerr black hole hypothesis. In this context, the parametrically deformed black hole metrics proposed by Konoplya, Rezzolla \\& Zhidenko (Phys. Rev. D93, 064015, 2016) form an important class of non-Kerr black holes. We implement this class of black hole metrics in \\textsc{relxill\\_nk}, which is a framework we have developed for testing for non-Kerr black holes using X-ray reflection spectroscopy. We compare the results from this new model in the Kerr limit with existing codes, illustrate the effect of the leading deformation parameters on the X-ray reflection spectrum and present constraints on some KRZ parameters using data from the supermassive black hole in Ark 564.