The jet kinetic power, distance and inclination of GRS 1915+105

Abstract

We apply a recently developed technique of calculating the minimum jet kinetic power to the major mass ejections of the black-hole binary GRS 1915+105 observed in radio wavelengths in 1994 and 1997. We derive for them the distance-dependent minimum power, and the corresponding mass flow rate and the total energy and mass content. We find that a fast increase of the jet power with the increasing distance combined with the jet power estimates based on the bolometric luminosity imply the source distance is <10 kpc. If the jet in GRS 1915 contains ions, their bulk motion dominates the jet power, which was either neglected or not properly taken into account earlier. We also reconsider the parameters of the binary, and derive the current best estimates of the distance-dependent black-hole mass and the inclination based on existing measurements combined with the kinematic constraints from the mass ejections. We also find the measurement of the donor radius of Steeghs et al. implies the distance to the system of <10 kpc, in agreement with the estimate from the jet power.

arXiv commentMNRAS,in press

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• BlackCAT: A catalogue of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray transients
• A Parallax Distance to the Microquasar GRS 1915+105 and a Revised Estimate of its Black Hole Mass
• Spectral analysis of the XMM-Newton data of GX 339-4 in the low/hard state: disc truncation and reflection
• AstroSat view of GRS 1915+105 during the Soft State: Detection of HFQPOs and estimation of Mass and Spin
• The balance of power: accretion and feedback in stellar mass black holes
• The minimum jet power and equipartition
• A search for very high-energy flares from the microquasars GRS 1915+105, Circinus X-1, and V4641 Sgr using contemporaneous H.E.S.S. and RXTE observations
• Wind-powered ultraluminous X-ray sources
• No Need for an Extreme Jet Energy in the Black-Hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1348--630
• Scale invariant jets: from blazars to microquasars
• The mass, luminosity and mass-loss rate of the donor of the V1487 Aql/GRS 1915+105 binary system