Ubiquitous equatorial accretion disc winds in black hole soft states

By G. Ponti, Robert P. Fender, M. Begelman, R. Dunn, J. Neilsen, M. Coriat. 2012

286 citations recorded by the source corpus.

High-resolution spectra of Galactic black holes (GBHs) reveal the presence of highly ionized absorbers. In one GBH, accreting close to the Eddington limit for more than a decade, a powerful accretion disc wind is observed to be present in softer X-ray states and it has been suggested that it can carry away enough mass and energy to quench the radio jet. Here we report that these winds, which may have mass outflow rates of the order of the inner accretion rate or higher, are a ubiquitous component of the jet-free soft states of all GBHs. We furthermore demonstrate that these winds have an equatorial geometry with opening angles of few tens of degrees, and so are only observed in sources in which the disc is inclined at a large angle to the line of sight. The decrease in Fe xxv/Fe xxvi line ratio with Compton temperature, observed in the soft state, suggests a link between higher wind ionization and harder spectral shapes. Although the physical interaction between the wind, accretion flow and jet is still not fully understood, the mass flux and power of these winds and their presence ubiquitously during the soft X-ray states suggest they are fundamental components of the accretion phenomenon

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/50086f24c13e473981e7f2744c3ed74de343161f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Best
2. T. Heckman
3. J. Gladstone
4. G. Sivakoff
5. B. Tetarenko
6. C. Heinke
7. G. Kauffmann
8. H. Netzer

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. P. Best
2. T. Heckman
3. J. Gladstone
4. G. Sivakoff
5. B. Tetarenko
6. C. Heinke
7. P. Padovani
8. G. Kauffmann

Citations in the corpus

• WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES (2015, background): “Ponti et al. (2012) have estimated the wind outflow rate, Ṁwind, in the majority of the sources in which a wind has been detected, to be at least twice theṀBH.”
• The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “A further important property of X-ray binaries is that winds and jets appear to anti-correlate (Miller et al. 2008, Neilsen & Lee 2009, Ponti et al. 2012): winds occur in the high-soft state when jets are not observed, but are not observed in the low-hard state where jets are ubiquitous.”