Correlated X-Ray Spectral and Timing Behavior of the Black Hole Candidate XTE J1550–564: A New Interpretation of Black Hole States

By J. Homan, R. Wijnands, M. van der Klis, T. Belloni, J. van Paradijs, M. Klein-Wolt, Robert P. Fender, M. Méndez. 2000

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We present an analysis of data of the black hole candidate and X-ray transient XTE J1550-564, taken with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer between 1998 November 22 and 1999 May 20. During this period the source went through several different states, which could be divided into soft and hard states based on the relative strength of the high-energy spectral component. These states showed up as distinct branches in the color-color and hardness-intensity diagrams, connecting to form a structure with a comblike topology, the branch corresponding to the soft state forming the spine and the branches corresponding to the various hard states forming the teeth of the comb. The power spectral properties of the source were strongly correlated with its position on the branches. The broadband noise became stronger and changed from power law-like to band-limited, as the spectrum became harder. Three types of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) were found: 1-18 Hz and 102-284 Hz QPOs on the hard branches, and 16-18 Hz QPOs on and near the soft branch. The 1-18 Hz QPOs on the hard branches could be divided into three subtypes. The frequencies of the high- and low-frequency QPOs on the hard branches were correlated with each other and were anticorrelated with spectral hardness. The changes in QPO frequency suggest that the inner disk radius only increases by a factor of 3-4 as the source changes from a soft to a hard state. Our results on XTE J1550-564 strongly favor a two-dimensional description of black hole behavior, where the regions near the spine of the comb in the color-color diagram can be identified with the high state, and the teeth with transitions from the high state, via the intermediate state (which includes the very high state) to the low state, and back. The two physical parameters underlying this two-dimensional behavior vary to a large extent independently and could for example be the accretion rate through the disk and the size of the Comptonizing region causing the hard tail. The difference between the various teeth is then associated with the mass accretion rate through the disk, suggesting that high state ↔ low state transitions can occur at any disk mass accretion rate and that these transitions are primarily caused by another, independent parameter. We discuss how this picture could tie in with the canonical, one-dimensional behavior of black hole candidates that has usually been observed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a923851732e476903c551f3c457f99e8d59938d2

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Citations in the corpus

Dynamical Evidence for a Black Hole in the Microquasar XTE J1550–564 (2001, background): “The determination of the black hole mass for XTE J1550 564 is especially important for the interpretation of the high-frequency X-ray QPOs observed for this system (Remillard et al. 2002; Homan et al. 2001).”
A global spectral study of black hole X-ray binaries (2009, background): “The natural first step is to follow e.g. Homan et al. (2001); Belloni (2004); Fender et al. (2004), and plot the X-ray observations in a Hardness-Intensity Diagram (HID) - in this case a HardnessLuminosity Diagram (HLD) to show the state changes of the BHXRBs during their outbursts.”
The evolution of the timing properties of the black-hole transient GX 339-4 during its 2002/2003 outburst (2005, neutral): “Both HS and LS were found to occur over a wide range of luminosities, effectively removing the need to distinguish between VHS and IMS; Homan et al. (2001) proposed to consider the VHS as just the highest luminosity instance of the IMS (see also van der Klis 2005).”
High-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations in black hole binaries (2012, background): “A small number of detections is available in the literature from a a small number of sources: GRS 1915+105 (Morgan et al. 1997; Strohmayer 2001a; Belloni et al. 2001; Remillard et al. 2002b; Belloni et al. 2006), GRO J1655-40 (Remillard et al. 1999; Strohmayer 2001b), XTE J1550-564 (Homan et al. 200”
Accretion disc variability in the hard state of black hole X-ray binaries (2009, background): “The relative strengths of these two components define the appearance of different ‘states’ (e.g. Homan et al. 2001).”
AN IMPROVED DYNAMICAL MODEL FOR THE MICROQUASAR XTE J1550−564 (2011, background): “We will briefly discuss here the implications for the QPOs, which have been observed in J1550 at frequencies up to 284 Hz.”
The ABC of Low-Frequency Quasi-periodic Oscillations in Black Hole Candidates: Analogies with Z Sources (2005, background): “B LFQPOs for which the identification was incontrovertible, and several typeC LFQPOs covering the observed frequency range (identifications from Wijnands et al. (1999a), Homan et al. (2001) and Remillard et al. (2002)).”
The Evolution of Black Hole States (2004, background): “Nevertheless, a few weak QPOs have been detected in the soft states of GRO J1655–40, XTE J1550–564, and H1743–322.”
Chandra/High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer Spectroscopy of the Galactic Black Hole GX 339–4: A Relativistic Iron Emission Line and Evidence for a Seyfert-like Warm Absorber (2003, background): “The spectral parameters measured during the first observation of XTE J1650 500 indicate that the source was likely observed in the ‘‘very high’’ or ‘‘intermediate state,’’ which may only be manifestations of the same state at different source fluxes (see, e.g., Homan et al. 2001).”
Hysteresis in the light curves of soft X-ray transients (2002, background): “…properties seem to resemble those of the very high state, but without its luminosity rising above the typical luminosity in the high/soft state (Homan et al. 2001), the black hole candidate GX 339-4 shows a very similar hysteresis effect in its state transitions between the low/hard and…”
Simultaneous Chandra and RXTE Spectroscopy of the Microquasar H1743–322: Clues to Disk Wind and Jet Formation from a Variable Ionized Outflow (2004, methodology): “Moreover, the parameters obtained from broadband spectral fits to H1743 322 with the phenomenological MCD plus power-law model are typical for Galactic black hole systems in bright phases (for a review, see McClintock & Remillard 2005; see also Homan et al. 2001).”
A Unified Model for Black Hole X-Ray Binary Jets? (2004, background): “The data analysed her correspond to the brightest one, in 1998/1999 (see Sobczak et l. 2000; Homan et al. 2001; Remillard et al. 2002).”
Long term variability of Cygnus X-1. I. X-ray spectral-temporal correlations in the hard state (2002, background): “…SLX 1735−269, GS 1826−24, XTE J1118+480, Cir X–1, and GX 17+2), as well as on published results from the black holes Cyg X–1, GX 339−4 (Nowak et al. 2002), and XTE J1550− 5 (Homan et al. 2001), and the neutron star sources 4U 1915−05 (Boirin et al. 2000) and 4U 1728−34 (Di Salvo et al. 2001).”
A Unified Description of the Timing Features of Accreting X-Ray Binaries (2002, methodology): “Correlation between low-frequency QPO and Lℓ Figure 12 shows the correlation of PBK99, together with the Nowak (2000), Boirin et al. (2000), Homan et al. (2001) Di Salvo et al. (2001) data. and Nowak, Wilms, & Dove (2002) data.”
STELLAR-MASS BLACK HOLE SPIN CONSTRAINTS FROM DISK REFLECTION AND CONTINUUM MODELING (2009, background): “The high frequency (100 Hz and above) QPOs that are most plausibly associated with inner orbits around black holes are too hard (spectrally) to arise via direct emission from the accretion disk (see, e.g., Homan et al. 2001).”
The spin of the black hole microquasar XTE J1550−564 via the continuum-fitting and Fe-line methods (2010, background): “The X-ray spectral and timing properties of this source have been comprehensively studied by many authors (e.g. Sobczak et al. 2000; Homan et al. 2001; Remillard et al. 2002b; Kubota & Done 2004; Dunn et al. 2010), as have been the properties of its radio counterpart (Corbel et al. 2001; Xue, Wu &…”
Characterizing the Quasi-periodic Oscillation Behavior of the X-Ray Nova XTE J1550–564 (2002, background): “…observations during the 1998-1999 outburst, the X-ray power spectra of XTE J1550[564 exhibit quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs) at both high frequencies (HFQPOs; D100È285 Hz; Remillard et al. 1999a ; Homan et al. 2001) and low frequencies (LFQPOs; 0.08È18 Hz; Cui et al. 1999 ; Sobczak et al. 2000a).”