Identification of black hole power spectral components across all canonical states

Abstract

From a uniform analysis of a large (8.5 Ms) Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer data set of Low Mass X-ray Binaries, we present a complete identification of all the variability components in the power spectra of black holes in their canonical states. It is based on gradual frequency shifts of the components observed between states, and uses a previous identification in the black hole low hard state as a starting point. It is supported by correlations between the frequencies in agreement with those previously found to hold for black hole and neutron stars. Similar variability components are observed in neutron stars and black holes (only the component observed at the highest frequencies is different) which therefore cannot depend on source-specific characteristics such as the magnetic field or surface of the neutron star or spin of the black hole. As the same variability components are also observed across the jet-line the X-ray variability cannot originate from the outer-jet but is most likely produced in either the disk or the corona. We use the identification to directly compare the difference in strength of the black hole and neutron star variability and find these can be attributed to differences in frequency and strength of high frequency features, and do not require the absence of any components. Black holes attain their highest frequencies (in the hard-intermediate and very-high states) at a level a factor ~6 below the highest frequencies attained by the corresponding neutron star components, which can be related to the mass difference between the compact objects in these systems.

17 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (1)

• Accretion states and radio loudness in Active Galactic Nuclei: analogies with X-ray binaries

Cited by in corpus (19)

• A transient radio jet in an erupting dwarf nova
• Patterns of variability in Be/X-ray pulsars during giant outbursts
• Inclination-dependent spectral and timing properties in transient black hole X-ray binaries
• Black hole mass determination in the X-ray binary 4U 1630--47: Scaling of spectral and variability characteristics
• Weighing the black holes in ultraluminous X-ray sources through timing
• Confrontation of Observation and Theory: High Frequency QPOs in X-ray Binaries, Tidal Disruption Events, and Active Galactic Nuclei
• Power-Colours: Simple X-ray Binary Variability Comparison
• Variability and phase lags of the type-C quasi-periodic oscillation of MAXI J1348-630 with NICER
• X-ray Spectral and Timing evolution of MAXI J1727-203 with NICER
• Testing the relativistic precession model using low frequency and kHz quasi-periodic oscillations in neutron star low mass X-ray binaries with known spin
• Complete Multiwavelength Evolution of Galactic Black Hole Transients During Outburst Decay II: Compact Jets and X-ray Variability Properties
• INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton Spectroscopy of GX 339-4 During Hard/Soft Intermediate and High/Soft States in the 2007 Outburst
• Detection of Very Low-Frequency Quasi-Periodic Oscillations in the 2015 Outburst of V404 Cygni
• A Comprehensive X-ray Report on AT2019wey
• The stochastic X-ray variability of the accreting millisecond pulsar MAXI J0911-655
• Discovery of Thermonuclear Type-I X-ray Bursts from the X-ray binary MAXI J1807+132
• The spectral-timing analysis of Cygnus X-1 with Insight-HXMT
• Low frequency QPOs and possible change in the accretion geometry during the outbursts of Aquila X$-$1
• Power spectral properties of the soft spectral states in four black hole transients