The Accretion Disk Wind in the Black Hole GRO J1655–40

By J. Miller, J. C. Raymond, C. Reynolds, A. C. Fabian, T. Kallman, J. K. U. O. Michigan, Harvard-Smithsonian Cfa, U. Maryland, U. Cambridge, NasaGsfc and 1 more. 2008

162 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on simultaneous Chandra HETGS and RXTE observations of the transient stellar-mass black hole GRO J1655–40, made during its 2005 outburst. Chandra reveals a line-rich X-ray absorption spectrum consistent with a disk wind. Prior modeling of the spectrum suggested that the wind may be magnetically driven, potentially providing insights into the nature of disk accretion onto black holes. In this paper, we present results obtained with new models for this spectrum, generated using three independent photoionization codes: XSTAR, Cloudy, and our own code. Fits to the spectrum in particular narrow wavelength ranges, in evenly spaced wavelength slices, and across a broad wavelength band all strongly prefer a combination of high density, high ionization, and small inner radius. Indeed, the results obtained from all three codes require a wind that originates more than 10 times closer to the black hole and carrying a mass flux that is on the order of 1000 times higher than predicted by thermal driving models. If seminal work on thermally driven disk winds is robust, magnetic forces may play a role in driving the disk wind in GRO J1655–40. However, even these modeling efforts must be regarded as crude given the complexity of the spectra. We discuss these results in the context of accretion flows in black holes and other compact objects.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a9832ebe6d93ffaddf0bc72c163319a408cdb9c4

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. C. Fabian
2. C. Reynolds
3. Ramesh Narayan
4. P. Best
5. F. Yuan
6. T. Heckman
7. J. Miller
8. G. Miniutti

In Biomedical Engineering

1. C. Reynolds
2. A. C. Fabian
3. J. Miller
4. F. Yuan
5. G. Miniutti
6. J. Gladstone
7. G. Sivakoff
8. B. Tetarenko

Citations in the corpus

• 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.”
• NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF HOT ACCRETION FLOWS. II. NATURE, ORIGIN, AND PROPERTIES OF OUTFLOWS AND THEIR POSSIBLE OBSERVATIONAL APPLICATIONS (2012, background): “Detailed spectral analysis and theoretical studies have been performed by different groups and confirmed repeatedly that this outflow was driven not by the radiation or thermal pressure, but likely by magnetic mechanism (Miller et al. 2006, 2008; Kallman et al. 2009; Luketic et al. 2010).”
• STELLAR-MASS BLACK HOLE SPIN CONSTRAINTS FROM DISK REFLECTION AND CONTINUUM MODELING (2009, methodology): “This range was also used in recent fits to the EPIC-pn “burst” mode spectrum of GX 339−4 in the very high state (Miller et al. 2004, 2008).”
• Ubiquitous equatorial accretion disc winds in black hole soft states (2012, background): “…11 GRS 1915+105 Chandra observations, Neilsen & Lee (2009) already measured a strong anticorrelation between the presence of the (radio) jet and of the winds, with the wind being present primarily during the jet-free soft states and disappearing during hard states (see also Miller et al. 2008).”
• Measuring Black Hole Spin Using X-Ray Reflection Spectroscopy (2013, background): “Strong outflows are confined to strongly thermally-dominated states (of potential concern for CF spin measurements) but are weak or absent during states that display prominent reflection (Miller et al. 2006, 2008; King et al. 2011, 2012).”
• WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES (2015, background): “…della Valle et al. (1991), [386] Bailyn & Orosz (1995), [387] Krimm et al. (2009b), [388] Ponti et al. (2012), [389] Miller et al. (2006b), [390] Miller et al. (2008), [391] Miller et al. (2004), [392] Prat et al. (2009),[393] Zhang et al. (2015a), [394] Miller et al. (2015a), [395] Negoro et…”