A global spectral study of black hole X-ray binaries

By R. Dunn, Robert P. Fender, E. Koerding, T. Belloni, C. Cabanac. 2009

212 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on a consistent and comprehensive spectral analysis of the X-ray emission of 25 black hole X-ray binaries. All publicly available observations of the black hole binaries in the RXTE archive were analysed. Three different types of model were fitted to investigate the spectral changes occurring during an outburst. For the population, as well as for each binary and each outburst from each binary, we construct two diagnostic diagrams. The hardness intensity/luminosity diagram (HID/HLD), the X-ray colour against the flux/luminosity of the binary, is most useful when studying a single binary. However, to compare different binary systems, the disc fraction luminosity diagram (DFLD) is more useful. The DFLD uses the luminosities of the disc and power-law components to calculate the ratio of the disc luminosity to the total luminosity, resulting in a more physical value, which is analogous to the X-ray colour calculated for X-ray binaries. The tracks of the outbursts populate the DFLD more evenly than the HLD. We discuss the limitations of both diagnostic diagrams for the study of the X-ray binary outbursts and clearly illustrate how the two diagrams map on to each other for real outburst data. The similarity of the X-ray colour and disc fraction behaviour over time during an outburst originally seen in GX 339?4 data is seen in other sources' outbursts. We extract the peak luminosities in a single outburst, as well as the luminosities at the transitions away from and returning to the power-law-dominated state for each outburst. The distribution of the luminosities at the transition from the power-law to the disc-dominated state peaks at around 0.3LEdd , the same as the peak of the distribution of the peak luminosities in an outburst. Using the disc fraction to calculate the transition luminosities shows that the distributions of the luminosities for the transitions away from and returning to the power-law-dominated state are both broad and appear to overlap. Using the change in disc fraction to calculate the date when a transition occurred is not drastically different from obtaining the dates from changes in the timing behaviour of the X-ray binary. In addition, we calculate the rate of motion of an X-ray binary through the DFLD during an outburst, a diagnostic which has the potential to be used as a comparison with populations of active galactic nuclei. The fastest rate of motion is on the egress and ingress from the power-law-dominated state. A further region of increased speed through the diagram occurs in the disc-dominated state on the return to the power-law-dominated state. Finally, we compare the measured X-ray luminosities with a small number of contemporaneous radio measurements. Overall, this is the most comprehensive and uniform global study of black hole X-ray binaries to date.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee034b1ec8ce5a6baed632f6b454d0f0f0273d86

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Citations in the corpus

Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, methodology): “A sensible value for χ is expected to lie in the range ∼ 0.001 − 0.1, by analogy with X-ray binaries (e.g. Dunn et al. 2010).”
WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES (2015, methodology): “To take into account the errors in the estimated transition luminosities we make use of the Monte Carlo method presented in Dunn et al. (2010), whereby we randomly select a value ofLbol/LEdd from a Gaussian distribution with 1σ values derived from the propagated error in the transition luminosity…”
A review of quasi-periodic oscillations from black hole X-ray binaries: Observation and theory (2019, unknown): “[46]) and GRS 1915+105 [163].”
Using the Fundamental Plane of black hole activity to distinguish X-ray processes from weakly accreting black holes (2011, background): “On the other hand, we only know of around two to three dozen GBHs in our Galaxy (see Dunn et al. 2010), precluding large statistical studies, and we cannot yet predict when GBHs will undergo outbursts.”
The spin of the black hole microquasar XTE J1550−564 via the continuum-fitting and Fe-line methods (2010, background): “…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 & Cui 2008; Hannikainen et al. 2009).”
Measuring the spins of accreting black holes (2011, background): “…state has been presented for a number of sources via plots showing that the bolometric luminosity of the thermal component is approximately proportional to T 4in (e.g., Kubota et al 2001, Kubota and Makishima 2004, Gierliński and Done 2004, Abe et al 2005, McClintock et al 2009, Dunn et al 2010).”
Ubiquitous equatorial accretion disc winds in black hole soft states (2012, methodology): “…we analysed the X-ray spectra of all the Chandra, XMM–Newton and Suzaku observations of black hole low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs; which are GBHs accreting by Roche lobe overflow) with well-studied outbursts (Dunn et al. 2010) and at least one deep (exposure >5 ks) grating spectroscopy observation.”
No evidence for black hole spin powering of jets in X-ray binaries (2010, background): “The most comprehensive compilation of X-ray data on black hole binaries is presented in Dunn et al. (2010).”