A radio-emitting outflow in the quiescent state of A0620−00: implications for modelling low-luminosity black hole binaries

By E. Gallo, Robert P. Fender, J. Miller-Jones, A. Merloni, Peter G. Jonker, S. Heinz, T. Maccarone, M. van der Klis. 2006

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Deep observations with the Very Large Array of A0620-00, performed in 2005 August, resulted in the first detection of radio emission from a black hole binary at X-ray luminosities as low as 10-8.5 times the Eddington limit. The measured radio flux density, of 51 +/- 7 ?Jy at 8.5 GHz, is the lowest reported for an X-ray binary system so far, and is interpreted in terms of partially self-absorbed synchrotron emission from outflowing plasma. Making use of the estimated outer accretion rate of A0620-00 in quiescence, we demonstrate that the outflow kinetic power must be energetically comparable to the total accretion power associated with such rate, if it was to reach the black hole with the standard radiative efficiency of 10 per cent. This favours a model for quiescence in which a radiatively inefficient outflow accounts for a sizable fraction of the missing energy, and, in turn, substantially affects the overall dynamics of the accretion flow. Simultaneous observations in the X-ray band, with Chandra, confirm the validity of a non-linear radio/X-ray correlation for hard state black hole binaries down to low quiescent luminosities, thereby contradicting some theoretical expectations. Taking the mass term into account, the A0620-00 data lie on the extrapolation of the so-called Fundamental Plane of black hole activity, which has thus been extended by more than two orders of magnitude in radio and X-ray luminosity. With the addition of the A0620-00 point, the plane relation provides an empirical proof for the scale invariance of the jet-accretion coupling in accreting black holes over the entire parameter space observable with current instrumentation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d9194531dc86c7843fbb7ff6db0dfc09e77b03bb

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Citations in the corpus

WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES (2015, unknown): “…[278]Mioduszewski & Rupen (2004), [279] Shrader et al. (1994), [280] Davis et al. (1975), [281] Duldig et al. (1979), [282] Geldzahler (1983), [283] Gallo et al. (2006),[284] Owen et al. (1976), [285] Uemura et al. (2000a), [286] Fender et al. (2001), [287] Ball et al. (1995), [288] Brocksopp et…”
On the origin of radio emission in radio-quiet quasars (2008, background): “We note in passing, that the least luminous GBH observed, A0620−00, detected at the quiescent state by Gallo et al. (2006), with log LX = 31.31 and log LR = 26.80, overlaps in Fig.”
Global optical/infrared-X-ray correlations in X-ray binaries: quantifying disc and jet contributions (2006, methodology): “The hard state OIR–X-ray correlation in BHXBs includes data from many BHXBs in low-luminosity quiescent states (7 sources with 1030 < LX < 1033.5 erg s−1), which was not possible for the radio–X-ray correlation due to radio detector limits (but see Gallo et al. 2006).”
The 'universal' radio/X-ray flux correlation : the case study of the black hole GX 339-4 (2012, methodology): “The quiescent level of A 0620−00 (Gallo et al. 2006) is remarkably consistent with an extrapolation of the GX 339−4 fit to lower fluxes.”
RADIO-LOUD NARROW-LINE SEYFERT 1 AS A NEW CLASS OF GAMMA-RAY ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2009, methodology): “In the case of PKS 2004−447, one XMM-Newton observation was found (ObsID 0200360201, performed on 2004 April 11; 42 ks exposure on EPIC, see Gallo et al. 2006) and analyzed.”
Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes (2014, background): “The two most promising sources are V404 Cyg (Corbel et al. 2008) and A0620-00 (Gallo et al. 2006), but the former is not dim enough to explore the low-luminosity end of the correlation, while the latter has data only in the quiescent state, not the hard state.”
No evidence for black hole spin powering of jets in X-ray binaries (2010, background): “6X ) as found in Gallo et al. (2006) for the most recent ensemble analysis, sowe are simply fitting normalisations to the relation as a proxy for relative jet power.”