Radiative Processes, Spectral States and Variability of Black-Hole Binaries(Session 4 : Theoretical/Numerial Approaches to the Accretion Physics)

By A. Zdziarski, Marek Gierlinski. 2004

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We review radiative processes responsible for X-ray emission in hard (low) and soft (high) spectral states of black-hole binaries. The main process in the hard state appears to be scattering of blackbody photons from a cold disk by thermal electrons in a hot inner flow, and any contribution from nonthermal synchrotron emission is at most small. In the soft states, blackbody disk emission dominates energetically, and its high-energy tail is due to scattering by hybrid, thermal/nonthermal electrons, probably in active regions above the disk surface. State transitions appear to correspond to a variable inner radius of the cold disk driven by changes of the accretion rate. The existence of two accretion solutions, hot and cold, in a range of the accretion rate leads to hysteresis in low-mass X-ray binaries.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering, Geophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1d22a911a503fec1ff56c8374331dafac317271c

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Citations in the corpus

An Accretion-Jet Model for Black Hole Binaries: Interpreting the Spectral and Timing Features of XTE J1118+480 (2004, background): “We note that many details of the X-ray ob- servations of BHCs have been successfully explained with a hot accretion flow model (see the review by Zdziarski & Gierliński 2004) and it remains an open question whether the jet model can do equally well.”
A systematic look at the Very High and Low/Hard state of GX 339-4: Constraining the black hole spin with a new reflection model (2008, background): “…efficient accretion through a disc (Shimura & Takahara 1995; Merloni, Fabian & Ross 2000), a power-law component due to inverse Compton scattering of the soft thermal disc photons in a cloud of hot electrons or “corona” (Zdziarski & Gierlinski 2004), and a reflection component (Ross & Fabian 1993).”
Gamma-ray binaries and related systems (2013, background): “Part of the available energy may be channeled into accelerating particles in the corona of the accretion disc (Zdziarski & Gierliński 2004; Malzac & Belmont 2009).”
Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes (2014, background): “A number of observations have confirmed the basic features of the truncated thin disk scenario in BHBs (see reviews by Zdziarski & Gierliński 2004, McClintock & Remillard 2006, Done et al. 2007, Poutanen & Veledina 2014): (1) A truncated thin disk is required to model the thermal spectral…”
Black hole accretion discs in the canonical low‐hard state (2009, background): “GX 339−4 is a dynamically constrained BHB located at a distance of 8 ± 2 kpc (Zdziarski & Gierlinski 2004).”
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF HOT ACCRETION FLOWS. II. NATURE, ORIGIN, AND PROPERTIES OF OUTFLOWS AND THEIR POSSIBLE OBSERVATIONAL APPLICATIONS (2012, background): “The luminosity of the hard state spans a large range, from very low values up to ∼ 10%LEdd or even 30%LEdd (e.g., Zdziarski & Gierliński 2004).”
Modelling the behaviour of accretion flows in X-ray binaries (2007, methodology): “…this is always accompanied by higher energy emission, which requires that some fraction of the accretion power is dissipated in optically thin material so that the energy does not thermalize to the disc temperature (see e.g. the review of radiative processes in BHB by Zdziarski & Gierliński 2004).”
X-Ray Properties of Black-Hole Binaries (2006, methodology): “Most models for the SPL state invoke inverse Compton scattering as the operant radiation mechanism (see Zdziarski & Gierliński 2004).”