Eclipsing Light-Curve Asymmetry for Black-Hole Accretion Flows

Abstract

We propose an eclipsing light-curve diagnosis for black-hole accretion flows. When emission from an inner accretion disk around a black hole is occulted by a companion star, the observed light curve becomes asymmetric at ingress and egress on a time scale of 0.1-1 seconds. This light-curve analysis provides a means of verifying the relativistic properties of the accretion flow, based on the special/general relativistic effects of black holes. The ``skewness'' for the eclipsing light curve of a thin disk is $\sim 0.08$, whereas that of a slim disk is $\sim 0$, since the innermost part is self-occulted by the disk's outer rim.

7 pages, 4 figures, PASJ accepted

References in corpus (2)

• Black Hole Shadows of Charged Spinning Black Holes
• Geometrical Effect of Supercritical Accretion Flows: Observational Implications of Galactic Black-Hole Candidates and Ultraluminous X-ray Sources

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• M 33 X-7: ChASeM33 reveals the first eclipsing black hole X-ray binary
• Eclipsing light curves for accretion flows around a rotating black hole and atmospheric effects of the companion star
• Wind asymmetry imprint in the UV light curves of the symbiotic binary SY Mus
• Optical Light Curves of Luminous Eclipsing Black Hole X-ray Binaries