The distances to Galactic low-mass X-ray binaries: consequences for black hole luminosities and kicks

By Peter G. Jonker, G. Nelemans. 2004

247 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigated the reported distances of Galactic black hole (BH) and neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). Comparing the distances derived for the neutron stars Cyg X-2 and XTE J2123-058 using the observed Eddington limited photospheric radius expansion bursts with the distances derived using the observed radius and effective temperature of the companion star, we find that the latter are smaller by approximately a factor of 1.5-2. The latter method is often employed to determine the distance to BH LMXBs. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is that the stellar absorption lines in fast rotating companion stars are different from those in the slowly rotating template stars as was found before for early-type stars. This could lead to a systematic mis-classification of the spectral type of the companion star, which in turn would yield a systematic error in the distance. Further, we derive a distance of 4.0 +2.0 -1.2 ) kpc for V404 Cyg, using parameters available in the literature. The interstellar extinction seems to have been overestimated for XTE J1550-564 and possibly for two other BH sources (H 1705-25 and GS 2000+25) as well. As a result of this, the distance to XTE J1550-564 may have been underestimated by as much as a factor three. We find that, using the new distances for XTE J1550-564 and V404 Cyg, the maximum outburst luminosity for at least five, but perhaps even seven, of the 15 BH soft X-ray transients exceed the Eddington luminosity for a 10-M ○. BH - showing that these systems would be classified as ultra-luminous X-ray sources had we observed them in other Galaxies. This renders support for the idea that many ultra-luminous X-ray sources are stellar-mass rather than intermediate-mass BHs. We find that the rms-value of the distance to the Galactic plane for BHs is consistent with that of neutron star LMXBs. This suggests that BHs could also receive a kick-velocity during their formation, although this has to be investigated in more detail. We find that the Galactic neutron star and BH l- and b-distributions are consistent with being the same. The neutron star and BH distribution is asymmetric in l with an excess of systems between -30° < l < 0° over systems with 0° < l < 30°.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/97163fddce842138bad333a7b0eae212d517a5a2

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Robert P. Fender
2. E. Koerding
3. T. Belloni
4. E. Gallo
5. J. Homan
6. A. Merloni
7. Stéphane Corbel
8. Heino Falcke

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Robert P. Fender
2. E. Koerding
3. E. Gallo
4. Stéphane Corbel
5. J. Homan
6. Heino Falcke
7. T. Belloni
8. G. Sivakoff

Citations in the corpus

• Refining the fundamental plane of accreting black holes (2006, methodology): “For V404 Cyg, we adopt the distance of 4 kpc (Jonker & Nelemans 2004).”
• Jets in neutron star X-ray binaries: a comparison with black holes (2005, methodology): “The atoll-type NS XRB 4U 1608-52 (located at a distance of ∼ 3.3 kpc; Jonker & Nelemans 2004) has been observed in 2004, on March 31 and April 03 for a total of∼ 12 hr with the Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) at 8.5 GHz.”
• Discovery of Coherent Millisecond X-Ray Pulsations in Aquila X-1 (2007, background): “The 2-10 keV flux is∼ 8.8 × 10−9 erg s−1 cm−2 which corresponds, assuming a distance of 5 kpc (Jonker & Nelemans 2004) and a bolometric correction of 1.4 (Migliari & Fender 2006), to a bolometric luminosity of ∼ 3.7 × 1037 erg s−1 ∼ 0.15LE.”
• Global optical/infrared-X-ray correlations in X-ray binaries: quantifying disc and jet contributions (2006, background): “References for Tables 1, 2 & 3: (1) Stanek & Garnavich (1998); (2) Gelino & Harrison (2003); (3) Boyd et al. (2000); (4) Kovács (2000); (5) Jonker & Nelemans (2004); (6) Chaty et al. (2003); (7) Casares et al. (2004); (8) Zdziarski et al. (2004); (9) della Valle, Mirabel & Rodriguez (1994); (10)…”
• XMM–Newton observations of the brightest ultraluminous X-ray sources (2006, background): “For example, the probable breaking of the Eddington limit seen in some - perhaps most (see Jonker & Nelemans 2004) - Galactic BHBs, and especially GRS 1915+105, argues that we cannot exclude stellar-mass BHs from producing ULXs on this trivial bsis (McClintock & Remillard 2003).”
• A global spectral study of black hole X-ray binaries (2009, unknown): “…(2009) indicates a revisedestimate of the distance of< 2.0 kpc. (1) Ritter & Kolb (2003) , (2) Park et al. (2004) , (3) Orosz et al. (2002) , (4) Jonker & Nelemans (2004) , (5) Augusteijn et al. (2001) , (6) Tomsick et al. (2005) , (7) Nowak et al. (2008) , (8) Thorstensen (1987) , (9) Shahbaz…”
• Investigating stellar‐mass black hole kicks (2012, methodology): “The z-distribution of BHLMXBs appears similar to the NS-LMXBs one (as already pointed out by Jonker & Nelemans 2004, who calculated the rms z for the two samples); the Kolmogorov-Smirnov probability P for the two distributions to be the same is indeed convincing: P ∼ 0.81 (that increases to 0.85 if…”
• WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES (2015, methodology): “Distance Here we outline four different methods (discussed in detail in Jonker & Nelemans 2004) to estimate distance to a XRB system.”
• Radiatively efficient accreting black holes in the hard state: the case study of H1743-322 (2011, methodology): “5 the hard state data from H1743−322, GX 339-4 (the data cover 7 outbursts over the period 1997–2010 and will be detailed in Corbel et al. [in preparation]), V404 Cyg (Gallo et al. 2003; Corbel et al. 2008) and the atoll neutron stars Aql X-1 (Tudose et al. 2009; Miller-Jones et al. 2010a) and 4U 17”
• A radio-emitting outflow in the quiescent state of A0620−00: implications for modelling low-luminosity black hole binaries (2006, background): “For comparison, GS 2000+25, whose quiescent X-ray luminosity is a factor of about 2 lower than A0620− 0 (Garcia et al. 2001) is located at a distance of 2.7 kpc (Jonker & Nelemans 2004 and references therein).”
• THE FIRST ACCURATE PARALLAX DISTANCE TO A BLACK HOLE (2009, background): “Extinction-based distances Our fitted source distance is significantly closer than the best previous distance estimate of 4.0+2.0 −1.2 kpc (Jonker & Nelemans 2004).”