On gravitomagnetic precession around black holes

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We compute exactly the frequency of Lense—Thirring precession for point masses in the Kerr metric, for arbitrary black hole mass and specific angular momentum. We show that this frequency, for point masses at or close to the innermost stable orbit, and for holes with moderate to extreme rotation, is less than, but comparable to, the rotation frequency. Thus, if the quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) observed in the modulation of the X-ray flux from some black hole candidates (BHCs) are caused by Lense—Thirring precession of orbiting material, we predict that a separate, distinct QPO ought to be observed in each object.