No Arabic abstract
X-ray disk winds are detected in spectrally soft, disk-dominated phases of stellar-mass black hole outbursts. In contrast, compact, steady, relativistic jets are detected in spectrally hard states that are dominated by non-thermal X-ray emission. Although these distinctive outflows appear to be almost mutually exclusive, it is possible that a disk wind persists in hard states but cannot be detected via X-ray absorption lines owing to very high ionization. Here, we present an analysis of a deep, 60 ksec Chandra/HETGS observation of the black hole candidate H 1743-322 in the low/hard state. The spectrum shows no evidence of a disk wind, with tight limits, and within the range of ionizing flux levels that were measured in prior Chandra observations wherein a wind was clearly detected. In H 1743-322, at least, disk winds are actually diminished in the low/hard state, and disk winds and jets are likely state-dependent and anti-correlated. These results suggest that although the launching radii of winds and jets may differ by orders of magnitude, they may both be tied to a fundamental property of the inner accretion flow, such as the mass accretion rate and/or the magnetic field topology of the disk. We discuss these results in the context of disk winds and jets in other stellar-mass black holes, and possible launching mechanisms for black hole outflows.
Using black body and power-law photon counts of All Sky Monitor (ASM) in Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite it has been established recently by us that there is a significant time lag between the infall timescales of two components in the Two-Component Advective Flow (TCAF) paradigm, where a standard slow moving Keplerian disc is surrounded by a fast moving halo. The time lag is clearly due to the difference in viscosity in the flow components and the size of the Keplerian disc may be considered to be proportional to the arrival time lag. In this paper, using RXTE/ASM (1.5-12 keV) data, we examine eight successive outbursts of the low-mass X-ray binary H 1743-322 since 2003 from a new angle. A dynamic photon index, {Theta} indicates that the size of the Keplerian disc is biggest during the brightest outburst of 2003. The size diminishes thereafter during subsequent weaker outbursts. These results are corroborated when two energy fluxes corresponding to the two flows are cross-correlated with reference to {Theta}. Moreover, {Theta} decides spectral transitions of any outburst. We show from the behaviour of {Theta} alone that the outburst of October 2008 was an anomalous outburst. In fact, each normal outburst was either preceded or followed by an otherwise premature outburst. This makes H 1743-322 an enigmatic source and a subject of further study.
We present the detection of type C quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) along with upper harmonic at respective frequencies of $sim0.6$ Hz and $sim1.2$ Hz in the single AstroSat observation taken during the 2016 outburst of the low-mass black hole X-ray binary H~1743--322. These frequencies are found to be shifted by $sim0.4$ Hz for the QPO and $sim0.8$ Hz for the upper harmonic with respect to that found in the simultaneous textit{XMM-Newton} and textit{NuSTAR} observation taken five days later than the AstroSat observation, indicating a certain geometrical change in the system. However, the centroid frequency of the QPO and the upper harmonic do not change with energy, indicating the energy-independent nature. The decreasing trend in the fractional rms of the QPO with energy is consistent with the previous results for this source in the low/hard state. The value of the photon index ($Gammasim1.67$) also indicates that the source was in the low/hard state during this particular observation. In addition, similar to the textit{XMM-Newton} observations during the same outburst, we find a hard lag of $sim21$ ms in the frequency range of $sim1-5$ Hz. The log-linear trend between the averaged time lag and energy indicates the propagation of fluctuations in the mass accretion rate from outer part of the accretion disk to the inner hot regions.
We observed the bright phase of the 2003 outburst of the Galactic black hole candidate H 1743-322 in X-rays simultaneously with Chandra and RXTE on four occasions. The Chandra/HETGS spectra reveal narrow, variable (He-like) Fe XXV and (H-like) Fe XXVI resonance absorption lines. In the first observation, the Fe XXVI line has a FWHM of 1800 +/- 400 km/s and a blue-shift of 700 +/- 200 km/s, suggesting that the highly ionized medium is an outflow. Moreover, the Fe XXV line is observed to vary significantly on a timescale of a few hundred seconds in the first observation, which corresponds to the Keplerian orbital period at approximately 1 E+4 gravitational radii. Our models for the absorption geometry suggest that a combination of geometric effects and changing ionizing flux are required to account for the large changes in line flux observed between observations, and that the absorption likely occurs at a radius less than 1 E+4 radii for a 10 Msun black hole. Viable models for the absorption geometry include cyclic absorption due to an accretion disk structure, absorption in a clumpy outflowing disk wind, or possibly a combination of these two. If the wind in H 1743-322 has unity filling factor, the highest implied mass outflow rate is 20 percent of the Eddington mass accretion rate. This wind may be a hot precursor to the Seyfert-like, outflowing warm absorber geometries recently found in the Galactic black holes GX 339-4 and XTE J1650-500. We discuss these findings in the context of ionized Fe absorption lines found in the spectra of other Galactic sources, and connections to warm absorbers, winds, and jets in other accreting systems.
We present an intensive radio and X-ray monitoring campaign on the 2009 outburst of the Galactic black hole candidate X-ray binary H1743-322. With the high angular resolution of the Very Long Baseline Array, we resolve the jet ejection event and measure the proper motions of the jet ejecta relative to the position of the compact core jets detected at the beginning of the outburst. This allows us to accurately couple the moment when the jet ejection event occurred with X-ray spectral and timing signatures. We find that X-ray timing signatures are the best diagnostic of the jet ejection event in this outburst, which occurred as the X-ray variability began to decrease and the Type C quasi-periodic oscillations disappeared from the X-ray power density spectrum. However, this sequence of events does not appear to be replicated in all black hole X-ray binary outbursts, even within an individual source. In our observations of H1743-322, the ejection was contemporaneous with a quenching of the radio emission, prior to the start of the major radio flare. This contradicts previous assumptions that the onset of the radio flare marks the moment of ejection. The jet speed appears to vary between outbursts, with a possible positive correlation with outburst luminosity. The compact core radio jet reactivated on transition to the hard intermediate state at the end of the outburst, and not when the source reached the low hard spectral state. Comparison with the known near-infrared behaviour of the compact jets suggests a gradual evolution of the compact jet power over a few days near the beginning and end of an outburst.
We study the disk-jet connection in supermassive black holes by investigating the properties of their optical and radio emissions utilizing the SDSS-DR7 and the NVSS catalogs. Our sample contains 7017 radio-loud quasars with detection both at 1.4~GHz and SDSS optical spectrum. Using this radio-loud quasar sample, we investigate the correlation among the jet power ($P_{rm jet}$), the bolometric disk luminosity ($L_{rm disk}$), and the black hole mass ($M_{rm BH}$) in the standard accretion disk regime. We find that the jet powers correlate with the bolometric disk luminosities as $log P_{rm jet} = (0.96pm0.012)log L_{rm disk} + (0.79 pm 0.55)$. This suggests that the jet production efficiency of $eta_{rm jet}simeq1.1_{-0.76}^{+2.6}times10^{-2}$ assuming the disk radiative efficiency of $0.1$ implying low black hole spin parameters and/or low magnetic flux for radio-loud quasars. But it can be also due to dependence of the efficiency on geometrical thickness of the accretion flow which is expected to be small for quasars accreting at the disk Eddington ratios $0.01 lesssim lambda lesssim 0.3$. This low jet production efficiency does not significantly increase even if we set the disk radiative efficiency of 0.3. We also investigate the fundamental plane in our samples among $P_{rm jet}$, $L_{rm disk}$, and $M_{rm BH}$. We could not find a statistically significant fundamental plane for radio-loud quasars in the standard accretion regime.