A parametrization to test black hole candidates with the spectrum of thin disks

We discuss a parametrization to describe possible deviations from the Kerr metric and test astrophysical black hole candidates with electromagnetic radiation. Our metric is a very simple generalization of the Kerr solution with two main properties: (1) the phenomenology is quite rich and, for example, it can describe black holes with high Novikov-Thorne radiative efficiency or black holes of very small size; (2) it is suitable for the numerical calculations required to study the spectrum of thin disks. The latter point is our principal motivation to study such a kind of parametrization, because in the analysis of real data there are usually several parameters to fit and the problem with current non-Kerr metrics is that the calculation times are too long. (orig.)