Disc corona radii and QPO frequencies in black hole binaries: testing Lense-Thirring precession origin

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kubota, Aya, Done, Chris, Tsurumi, Kazuki, Mizukawa, Ryuki
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866914632543764480
author Kubota, Aya
Done, Chris
Tsurumi, Kazuki
Mizukawa, Ryuki
author_facet Kubota, Aya
Done, Chris
Tsurumi, Kazuki
Mizukawa, Ryuki
contents Stellar-mass black hole binary systems in the luminous X-ray states show a strong quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) in their Comptonised emission. The frequency of this feature correlates with the ratio of a disc to Comptonised emission rather than with total luminosity. Hence it changes dramatically during spectral transitions between the hard and soft states. Its amplitude is also strongest in these intermediate states, making them an important test of QPO models. However, these have complex spectra which generally require a disc and two separate Comptonisation components, making it difficult to uniquely derive the spectral parameters. We build a new energy-conserving model of the accretion flow, SSsed model, which assumes a fixed radial emissivity but with a changing emission mechanism. This is similar to the agnsed model in xspec but tuned to be more suitable for stellar mass black holes. It uses a combination of the disc luminosity and temperature to constrain the inner radius of the (colour temperature corrected) blackbody disc, separating this from the more complex Comptonisation spectra emitted inwards of this radius. We show a pilot study of this model fit to hundreds of RXTE spectra of the black hole binary XTE J1550-564. We show that the derived disc radius tightly anti-correlates with the central frequencies of the low-frequency QPO detected in the same observations. The relation is consistent with the quantitative predictions of Lense-Thirring precession of the entire inner Comptonisation regions for the assumed system parameters. This supports the scenario that low-frequency QPOs are caused by Lense-Thirring precession.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2302_08314
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Disc corona radii and QPO frequencies in black hole binaries: testing Lense-Thirring precession origin
Kubota, Aya
Done, Chris
Tsurumi, Kazuki
Mizukawa, Ryuki
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Stellar-mass black hole binary systems in the luminous X-ray states show a strong quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) in their Comptonised emission. The frequency of this feature correlates with the ratio of a disc to Comptonised emission rather than with total luminosity. Hence it changes dramatically during spectral transitions between the hard and soft states. Its amplitude is also strongest in these intermediate states, making them an important test of QPO models. However, these have complex spectra which generally require a disc and two separate Comptonisation components, making it difficult to uniquely derive the spectral parameters. We build a new energy-conserving model of the accretion flow, SSsed model, which assumes a fixed radial emissivity but with a changing emission mechanism. This is similar to the agnsed model in xspec but tuned to be more suitable for stellar mass black holes. It uses a combination of the disc luminosity and temperature to constrain the inner radius of the (colour temperature corrected) blackbody disc, separating this from the more complex Comptonisation spectra emitted inwards of this radius. We show a pilot study of this model fit to hundreds of RXTE spectra of the black hole binary XTE J1550-564. We show that the derived disc radius tightly anti-correlates with the central frequencies of the low-frequency QPO detected in the same observations. The relation is consistent with the quantitative predictions of Lense-Thirring precession of the entire inner Comptonisation regions for the assumed system parameters. This supports the scenario that low-frequency QPOs are caused by Lense-Thirring precession.
title Disc corona radii and QPO frequencies in black hole binaries: testing Lense-Thirring precession origin
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.08314