Mass transfer from the donor of GRS 1915+105

Abstract

A scenario for a periodic filling and emptying of the accretion disc of the microquasar GRS 1915+105 is proposed, by computing the mass transfer rate from the evolving low mass red giant donor (Greiner at al. 2001) and comparing it with the observed accretion rate onto the primary black hole. We propose a duty-cycle with (5-10)(eta/0.1) per cent active ON-state where eta is the efficiency of converting accretion into radiation. The duration of the quiescent recurrent OFF-state is identified as the viscosity time scale at the circularization radius and equals 370(alpha/0.001)^(-4/5) years, where alpha is the viscosity parameter in the alpha-prescription of a classical disc. If the viscosity at the outer edge of the disc is small and eta is close to the maximum available potential energy (per rest mass energy) at the innermost stable orbit, the present active phase may last another 10 - 20 years.

5 pages, 1 figure, accepted for Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (2)

• Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources in External Galaxies
• Identification of the donor in the X-ray binary GRS 1915+105

Cited by in corpus (9)

• On the formation and evolution of black-hole binaries
• Jet-Induced Nucleosynthesis in Misaligned Microquasars
• Formation and Evolution of Microquasar GRS 1915+105
• The decline and fall of GRS 1915+105: the end is nigh?
• The Swift Bulge Survey: optical and near-IR follow-up featuring a likely symbiotic X-ray binary & a focused wind CV
• The Remarkable Stability of Probable Black Hole Low-Mass X-ray Binaries in Nearby Galaxies
• Time-resolved spectroscopy on the heartbeat state of GRS 1915+105 using AstroSat
• Identification of a 12-17 day timescale in X-ray observations of GRS 1915+105
• The mass, luminosity and mass-loss rate of the donor of the V1487 Aql/GRS 1915+105 binary system