Abstract:
It is generally considered that the X-ray emission in AGN and Galactic Black Hole Candidates
is produced by flares above the surface of a geometrically thin optically thick accretion disk,
which extends down to the Innermost Stable Circular Orbit (ISCO) of the black hole. We
consider the influence of the black hole geometry on the light curves of these flares. To this
end we follow a large number of photon orbits emitted impulsively in a locally isotropic fashion,
at any phase of the disk orbit and examine their arrival times at infinity by an observer near
the plane of the disk. We find out that the presence of the black hole spin induces a certain
delay in the photon arrivals, as prograde photon orbits reach the observer on shorter (on the average) times than the retrograde ones. We form a histogram of the differences in photon time arrivals and we find that it exhibits several well defined peaks depending on the flare position and the black hole spin separated by $\Delta t \simeq 30 M$, where M is the black hole mass. The peaks disappear as the spin parameter goes to zero, implying that one could in principle measure
the value of the black hole spin with timing measurements of sufficiently high signal to noise
ratio