Abstract

In recent years, X-ray polarization has opened up a new window into our understanding of astrophysical sources. Among them are accreting stellar-mass black holes, which play a key role in testing the behavior of matter in extreme gravitational environments. These sources can be observed in different states of the accretion cycle, predominantly in the soft and hard states. Every state is dominated by a combination of thermal disk, coronal, or reflected emission—each type containing different information about the environment around the black hole that can be understood through polarization. Polarimeters such as the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer and XL-Calibur allow us to probe the inner X-ray emitting parts of the system to study the black hole’s accretion flow. In this work, we model recent polarization observations of black holes in X-ray binaries, paying special attention to multiple observations of a source in different accretion states. We conduct timing, spectral, polarimetric, and spectropolarimetric analyses to study black hole mass accretion rate, ionization, disk temperature, and corona properties through the polarization of their different emission mechanisms.

Committee Chair

Henric Krawczsynki

Committee Members

Manel Errando; Michael Nowak; Michela Negro; Yajie Yuan

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Physics

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

5-8-2025

Language

English (en)

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