No Arabic abstract
We analyze seven NICER and NuSTAR epochs of the black hole X-ray binary GX 339-4 in the hard state during its two most recent hard-only outbursts in 2017 and 2019. These observations cover the 1-100 keV unabsorbed luminosities between 0.3% and 2.1% of the Eddington limit. With NICERs negligible pile-up, high count rate and unprecedented time resolution, we perform a spectral-timing analysis and spectral modeling using relativistic and distant reflection models. Our spectral fitting shows that as the inner disk radius moves inwards, the thermal disk emission increases in flux and temperature, the disk becomes more highly ionized and the reflection fraction increases. This coincides with the inner disk increasing its radiative efficiency around ~1% Eddington. We see a hint of hysteresis effect at ~0.3% of Eddington: the inner radius is significantly truncated during the rise ($>49R_{g}$), while only a mild truncation ($sim5R_g$) is found during the decay. At higher frequencies ($2-7$~Hz) in the highest luminosity epoch, a soft lag is present, whose energy dependence reveals a thermal reverberation lag, with an amplitude similar to previous findings for this source. We also discuss the plausibility of the hysteresis effect and the debate of the disk truncation problem in the hard state.
We report on the spectroscopic analysis of the black hole binary GX 339-4 during its recent 2017-2018 outburst, observed simultaneously by the Swift and NuSTAR observatories. Although during this particular outburst the source failed to make state transitions, and despite Sun constraints during the peak luminosity, we were able to trigger four different observations sampling the evolution of the source in the hard state. We show that even for the lowest luminosity observations the NuSTAR spectra show clear signatures of X-ray reprocessing (reflection) in an accretion disk. Detailed analysis of the highest signal-to-noise spectra with our family of relativistic reflection models RELXILL indicates the presence of both broad and narrow reflection components. We find that a dual-lamppost model provides a superior fit when compared to the standard single lamppost plus distant neutral reflection. In the dual lamppost model two sources at different heights are placed on the rotational axis of the black hole, suggesting that the narrow component of the Fe K emission is likely to originate in regions far away in the disk, but still significantly affected by its rotational motions. Regardless of the geometry assumed, we find that the inner edge of the accretion disk reaches a few gravitational radii in all our fits, consistent with previous determinations at similar luminosity levels. This confirms a very low degree of disk truncation for this source at luminosities above ~1% Eddington. Our estimates of Rin reinforces the suggested behavior for an inner disk that approaches the inner-most regions as the luminosity increases in the hard state.
We fit spectra of galactic transient source GX~339-4 during its 2013 outburst using Two Component Advective Flow (TCAF) solution. For the first time, we are fitting combined NuSTAR and Swift observation with TCAF. We use TCAF to fit 0.8-9.0~keV Swift and 4-79 keV NuSTAR spectra along with the LAOR model. To fit the data we use disk accretion rate, halo accretion rate, size of the Compton cloud and the density jump of advective flows at this cloud boundary as model parameters. From TCAF fitted flow parameters, and energy spectral index we conclude that the source was in the hard state throughout this particular outburst. The present analysis also gives some idea about the broadening of Fe $K_{alpha}$ with the accretion rate. Since TCAF does not include Fe line yet, we make use of the `LAOR model as a phenomenological model and find an estimate of the Kerr parameter to be $sim 0.99$ for this candidate.
Black hole X-ray binaries display large outbursts, during which their properties are strongly variable. We develop a systematic spectral analysis of the 3-40 keV RXTE/PCA data in order to study the evolution of these systems and apply it to GX 339-4. Using the low count rate observations, we provide a precise model of the Galactic background at GX 339-4s location and discuss its possible impact on the source spectral parameters. At higher fluxes, the use of a Gaussian line to model the reflection component can lead to the detection of a high-temperature disk, in particular in the high-hard state. We demonstrate that this component is an artifact arising from an incomplete modeling of the reflection spectrum.
We present a broad band spectral analysis of the black hole binary GX~339-4 with NuSTAR and Swift using high density reflection model. The observations were taken when the source was in low flux hard states (LF) during the outbursts in 2013 and 2015, and in a very high flux soft state (HF) in 2015. The high density reflection model can explain its LF spectra with no requirement for an additional low temperature thermal component. This model enables us to constrain the density in the disc surface of GX~339-4 in different flux states. The disc density in the LF state is $log(n_{rm e}/$ cm$^{-3})approx21$, 100 times higher than the density in the HF state ($log(n_{rm e}/$ cm$^{-3})=18.93^{+0.12}_{-0.16}$). A close-to-solar iron abundance is obtained by modelling the LF and HF broad band spectra with variable density reflection model ($Z_{rm Fe}=1.50^{+0.12}_{-0.04}Z_{odot}$ and $Z_{rm Fe}=1.05^{+0.17}_{-0.15}Z_{odot}$ respectively).
We analyze eleven NuSTAR and Swift observations of the black hole X-ray binary GX 339-4 in the hard state, six of which were taken during the end of the 2015 outburst, five during a failed outburst in 2013. These observations cover luminosities from 0.5%-5% of the Eddington luminosity. Implementing the most recent version of the reflection model relxillCp, we perform simultaneous spectral fits on both datasets to track the evolution of the properties in the accretion disk including the inner edge radius, the ionization, and temperature of the thermal emission. We also constrain the photon index and electron temperature of the primary source (the corona). We find the disk becomes more truncated when the luminosity decreases, and observe a maximum truncation radius of $37R_g$. We also explore a self-consistent model under the framework of coronal Comptonization, and find consistent results regarding the disk truncation in the 2015 data, providing a more physical preferred fit for the 2013 observations.