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Accreting stellar-mass black holes often show a `Type-C' quasi-periodicoscillation (QPO) in their X-ray flux, and an iron emission line in their X-rayspectrum. The iron line is generated through continuum photons reflecting offthe accretion disk, and its shape is distorted by relativistic motion of theorbiting plasma and the gravitational pull of the black hole. The physicalorigin of the QPO has long been debated, but is often attributed toLense-Thirring precession, a General Relativistic effect causing the inner flowto precess as the spinning black hole twists up the surrounding space-time.This predicts a characteristic rocking of the iron line between red and blueshift as the receding and approaching sides of the disk are respectivelyilluminated. Here we report on XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations of the blackhole binary H 1743-322 in which the line energy varies systematically over the~4 s QPO cycle (3.70 sigma significance), as predicted. This provides strongevidence that the QPO is produced by Lense-Thirring precession, constitutingthe first detection of this effect in the strong gravitation regime. There arehowever elements of our results harder to explain, with one section of databehaving differently to all the others. Our result enables the futureapplication of tomographic techniques to map the inner regions of black holeaccretion disks.

A quasi-periodic modulation of the iron line centroid energy in the black hole binary H 1743-322