X-ray Transients: Hyper- or Hypo-Luminous?

Abstract

The disk instability picture gives a plausible explanation for the behavior of soft X-ray transient systems if self-irradiation of the disk is included. We show that there is a simple relation between the peak luminosity (at the start of an outburst) and the decay timescale. We use this relation to place constraints on systems assumed to undergo disk instabilities. The observable X-ray populations of elliptical galaxies must largely consist of long-lived transients, as deduced on different grounds by Piro and Bildsten (2002). The strongly-varying X-ray source HLX-1 in the galaxy ESO 243-49 can be modeled as a disk instability of a highly super-Eddington stellar-mass binary similar to SS433. A fit to the disk instability picture is not possible for an intermediate-mass black hole model for HLX-1. Other, recently identified, super-Eddington ULXs might be subject to disk instability.

4 pages, Astrophysical Journal Letters, accepted

References in corpus (11)

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• Accretion disc viscosity: how big is alpha?
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• A mass of less than 15 solar masses for the black hole in an ultraluminous X-ray source
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• Stability of helium accretion discs in ultracompact binaries
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Cited by in corpus (22)

• Ultraluminous X-ray sources
• Strong disc winds traced throughout outbursts in black-hole X-ray binaries
• No magnetars in ULXs
• Black hole accretion discs
• The observed vs total population of ULXs
• The slimming effect of advection on black-hole accretion flows
• Nature of the Extreme Ultraluminous X-ray Sources
• Outbursts of the intermediate-mass black hole HLX-1: a wind instability scenario
• Does the intermediate mass black hole in LEDA 87300 (RGG 118) follow the near-quadratic (M_bh)-(M_spheroid) relation?
• ESO 243-49 HLX-1: scaling of X-ray spectral properties and black hole mass determination
• Models of Ultra-Luminous X-ray transient sources
• A Chandra Virgo cluster survey of spiral galaxies. I. Introduction to the survey and a new ULX sample
• Understanding the environment around the intermediate mass black hole candidate ESO 243-49 HLX-1
• X-ray outbursts of ESO 243-49 HLX-1: comparison with Galactic low-mass X-ray binary transients
• Investigation of X-ray timing and spectral properties of ESO 243-49 HLX-1 with long-term Swift Monitoring
• Geometrical beaming of stellar mass ULXs
• The peculiar spectral evolution of the new X-ray transient MAXI J0637-430
• A 2-hr binary period for the black hole transient MAXI J0637-430
• ULX behaviour: the ultraluminous state, winds & interesting anomalies
• Discovery of a second outbursting hyperluminous X-ray source
• Limits on thickness and efficiency of Polish doughnuts in application to the ULX sources
• Recurrent outbursts revealed in 3XMM J031820.8-663034