Discovery and evolution of the new black hole candidate Swift J1539.2-6227 during its 2008 outburst

Abstract

We report on the discovery by the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer of the black hole candidate Swift J1539.2-6227 and the subsequent course of an outburst beginning in November 2008 and lasting at least seven months. The source was discovered during normal observations with the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on 2008 November 25. An extended observing campaign with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) and Swift provided near-daily coverage over 176 days, giving us a good opportunity to track the evolution of spectral and timing parameters with fine temporal resolution through a series of spectral states. The source was first detected in a hard state during which strong low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) were detected. The QPOs persisted for about 35 days and a signature of the transition from the hard to soft intermediate states was seen in the timing data. The source entered a short-lived thermal state about 40 days after the start of the outburst. There were variations in spectral hardness as the source flux declined and returned to a hard state at the end of the outburst. The progression of spectral states and the nature of the timing features provide strong evidence that Swift J1539.2-6227 is a candidate black hole in a low-mass X-ray binary system.

Accepted by the Astrophysical Journal

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• Multiwavelength spectral and high time resolution observations of SWIFT J1753.5-0127: new activity?
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Cited by in corpus (13)

• The Swift/BAT Hard X-ray Transient Monitor
• BlackCAT: A catalogue of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray transients
• WATCHDOG: A Comprehensive All-Sky Database of Galactic Black Hole X-ray Binaries
• X-ray outbursts of low-mass X-ray binary transients observed in the RXTE era
• INTEGRAL/IBIS 17-yr hard X-ray all-sky survey
• The last three outbursts of H 1743-322 observed by RXTE in its latest service phase
• Unbeamed tidal disruption events at hard X-rays
• Swift J164449.3+573451 and Swift J2058.4+0516: Black hole mass estimates for tidal disruption event sources
• Quiescent NIR and optical counterparts to candidate black hole X-ray binaries
• Rapid spectral transition of the black hole binary V404 Cyg
• A Dependable Distance Estimator to Black Hole Low-Mass X-ray Binaries
• MeerKAT radio detection of the Galactic black hole candidate Swift J1842.5-1124 during its 2020 outburst
• A search for optical counterparts in quiescent black hole X-ray transients