X-ray Spectral Analysis of the Steady States of GRS 1915+105

Abstract

We report on the X-ray spectral behavior within the steady states of GRS 1915+105. Our work is based on the full data set on the source obtained using the Proportional Counter Array on the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and 15 GHz radio data obtained using the Ryle Telescope. The steady observations within the X-ray data set naturally separated into two regions in the color-color diagram and we refer to them as steady-soft and steady-hard. GRS 1915+105 displays significant curvature in the coronal component in both the soft and hard data within the {\it RXTE}/PCA bandpass. A majority of the steady-soft observations displays a roughly constant inner disk radius (R_in), while the steady-hard observations display an evolving disk truncation which is correlated to the mass accretion rate through the disk. The disk flux and coronal flux are strongly correlated in steady-hard observations and very weakly correlated in the steady-soft observations. Within the steady-hard observations we observe two particular circumstances when there are correlations between the coronal X-ray flux and the radio flux with log slopes η~0.68 +/- 0.35 and η~ 1.12 +/- 0.13. They are consistent with the upper and lower tracks of Gallo et al. (2012), respectively. A comparison of model parameters to the state definitions show that almost all steady-soft observations match the criteria of either thermal or steep power law state, while a large portion of the steady-hard observations match the hard state criteria when the disk fraction constraint is neglected.

21 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

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• Stronger Reflection from Black Hole Accretion Disks in Soft X-ray States
• ALMA/NICER observations of GRS 1915+105 indicate a return to a hard state
• Insight-HXMT Study of the Inner Accretion Disk in the Black Hole Candidate EXO 1846--031
• Spectral Analysis of $\chi$ Class Data of GRS 1915+105 Using TCAF Solution
• Comparing X-ray color selection in separating X-ray binary classes using Color-Color-Intensity diagrams