Relating Peak Optical Luminosity and Orbital Period of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in X-ray Binaries

Victoria A. Blackmon; Thomas J. Maccarone

doi:10.1093/mnras/stac3680

paper

Relating Peak Optical Luminosity and Orbital Period of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in X-ray Binaries

arXiv:2212.09938 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stac3680

Abstract

We compare the peak optical luminosity with the orbital period for a sample of 22 stellar-mass black hole candidates with good measurements of both quantities. We find that the peak absolute magnitude for the outbursts follows a linear relation with $M_{V, p e ak} = 3.48 (\pm 0.85) - 3.89 (\pm 0.91) log P_{or b}$ , which corresponds to a $L_{V} \propto P_{or b}^{1.56 \pm 0.36}$ power law relation. Excluding V4641 Sgr which is a strong outlier and not likely to have outbursts produced by the standard disc instability model, in addition to BW Cir and V821 Ara -- both of which have highly uncertain distances; the new correlation for the 19 sources is found to be $M_{V, p e ak} = 3.01 (\pm 0.93) - 3.21 (\pm 1.04) log P_{or b}$ , which corresponds to $L_{V} \propto P_{or b}^{1.28 \pm 0.42}$ . This is an analogous relationship to the "Warner relation" between orbital period and peak luminosity found for cataclysmic variables. We discuss the implications of these results for finding black hole X-ray binaries in other galaxies and in our own Galaxy with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and other future large time domain surveys.

arXiv comment6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Relating Peak Optical Luminosity and Orbital Period of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in X-ray Binaries

Abstract

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