A Peculiar Flaring Episode of Cygnus X-1

Abstract

Recent monitoring of Cyg X-1 with {\em RXTE} revealed a period of intense flaring, which started in October of 2000 and lasted until March of 2001. The source exhibited some quite unusual behaviors during this period. The soft X-ray flux of the source went up and down three times on a timescale of about one month, as discovered by the ASM aboard RXTE, before finally returning to the normal level (of the hard state). The observed spectral and temporal X-ray properties of Cyg X-1 are mostly intermediate between the canonical hard and soft states. This is known previously for strong X-ray flares, however, we show that the source did enter a period that resembles, in many ways, a sustained soft state during the last of the three flares. We make detailed comparisons between this flare and the 1996 state transition, in terms of the observed X-ray properties, such as flux--hardness correlation, X-ray spectrum, and power density spectrum. We point out the similarities and differences, and discuss possible implications of the results on our understanding of the phenomena of flares and state transitions associated with Cyg X-1.

4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

References in corpus (1)

• The First High Resolution X-ray Spectrum of Cyg X-1: Soft X-Ray Ionization and Absorption

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Long Term Variability of Cyg X-1 I. X-ray spectral-temporal correlations in the hard state
• Understanding the long-term spectral variability of Cygnus X-1 with BATSE and ASM observations
• Resolving the Composite Fe K-alpha Emission Line in the Galactic Black Hole Cygnus X-1 with Chandra
• Long Term Variability of Cyg X-1, II. The rms-Flux Relation
• X-ray Flaring Activity of Mrk 421
• Evolution of the 0.01 - 25 Hz power spectral components in Cygnus X-1
• Observations of giant outbursts from Cygnus X-1
• Spectro-timing analysis of Cygnus X-1 during a fast state transition
• Probing the hard and intermediate states of X-ray binaries using short time-scale variability
• Fast Spectral Variability from Cygnus X-1
• Timescale Resolved Spectroscopy of Cyg X-1
• Shot cutoff timescales in different spectral states of Cygnus X-1