No Arabic abstract
The Galactic black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1820+070 had a bright outburst in 2018 when it became the second brightest X-ray source in the Sky. It was too bright for X-ray CCD instruments such as XMM-Newton and Chandra, but was well observed by photon-counting instruments such as NICER and NuSTAR. We report here on the discovery of an excess emission component during the soft state. It is best modelled with a blackbody spectrum in addition to the regular disk emission, modelled either as diskbb or kerrbb. Its temperature varies from about 0.9 to 1.1 keV which is about 30 to 80 per cent higher than the inner disc temperature of diskbb. Its flux varies between 4 and 12 percent of the disc flux. Simulations of magnetised accretion discs have predicted the possibility of excess emission associated with a non-zero torque at the Innermost Stable Circular Orbit (ISCO) about the black hole, which from other NuSTAR studies lies at about 5 gravitational radii or about 60 km (for a black hole mass is 8 M). In this case the emitting region at the ISCO has a width varying between 1.3 and 4.6 km and would encompass the start of the plunge region where matter begins to fall freely into the black hole.
We present intermediate resolution spectroscopy of the optical counterpart to the black hole X-ray transient MAXI J1820+070 (=ASASSN-18ey) obtained with the OSIRIS spectrograph on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias. The observations were performed with the source close to the quiescent state and before the onset of renewed activity in August 2019. We make use of these data and K-type dwarf templates taken with the same instrumental configuration to measure the projected rotational velocity of the donor star. We find $v_{rot} sin i = 84 pm 5$ km s$^{-1}$ ($1!-!sigma$), which implies a donor to black-hole mass ratio $q = {M_2}/{M_1} = 0.072 pm 0.012$ for the case of a tidally locked and Roche-lobe filling donor star. The derived dynamical masses for the stellar components are $M_1 = (5.95 pm 0.22)sin ^{-3}i$ $M_odot$ and $M_2 = (0.43 pm 0.08) sin^{-3}i$ $M_odot$. The use of $q$, combined with estimates of the accretion disk size at the time of the optical spectroscopy, allows us to revise our previous orbital inclination constraints to $66^{circ} < i < 81^{circ}$. These values lead to 95% confidence level limits on the masses of $5.73 <M_1(M_odot) < 8.34$ and $0.28 < M_2(M_odot) < 0.77$. Adopting instead the $63 pm 3^{circ}$ orientation angle of the radio jet as the binary inclination leads to $M_1 = 8.48^{+0.79}_{-0.72} M_odot$ and $M_2 = 0.61^{+0.13}_{-0.12} M_odot$ ($1!-!sigma$).
We study X-ray spectra from the outburst rise of the accreting black-hole binary MAXI J1820+070. We find that models having the disk inclinations within those of either the binary or the jet imply significant changes of the accretion disk inner radius during the luminous part of the hard spectral state, with that radius changing from $>$100 to $sim$10 gravitational radii. The main trend is a decrease with the decreasing spectral hardness. Our analysis requires the accretion flow to be structured, with at least two components with different spectral slopes. The harder component dominates the bolometric luminosity and produces strong, narrow, X-ray reflection features. The softer component is responsible for the underlying broader reflection features. The data are compatible with the harder component having a large scale height, located downstream the disk truncation radius, and reflecting mostly from remote parts of the disk. The softer component forms a corona above the disk up to some transition radius. Our findings can explain the changes of the characteristic variability time scales, found in other works, as being driven by the changes of the disk characteristic radii.
We study the evolution of the temporal properties of MAXI 1820+070 during the 2018 outburst in its hard state from MJD 58190 to 58289 with Insight-HXMT in a broad energy band 1-150 keV. We find different behaviors of the hardness ratio, the fractional rms and time lag before and after MJD 58257, suggesting a transition occurred at around this point. The observed time lags between the soft photons in the 1-5 keV band and the hard photons in higher energy bands, up to 150 keV, are frequency-dependent: the time lags in the low-frequency range, 2-10 mHz, are both soft and hard lags with a timescale of dozens of seconds but without a clear trend along the outburst; the time lags in the high-frequency range, 1-10 Hz, are only hard lags with a timescale of tens of milliseconds; first increase until around MJD 58257 and decrease after this date. The high-frequency time lags are significantly correlated to the photon index derived from the fit to the quasi-simultaneous NICER spectrum in the 1-10 keV band. This result is qualitatively consistent with a model in which the high-frequency time lags are produced by Comptonization in a jet.
During a 2018 outburst, the black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1820+070 was comprehensively monitored at multiple wavelengths as it underwent a hard to soft state transition. During this transition a rapid evolution in X-ray timing properties and a short-lived radio flare were observed, both of which were linked to the launching of bi-polar, long-lived relativistic ejecta. We provide detailed analysis of two Very Long Baseline Array observations, using both time binning and a new dynamic phase centre tracking technique to mitigate the effects of smearing when observing fast-moving ejecta at high angular resolution. We identify a second, earlier ejection, with a lower proper motion of $18.0pm1.1$ mas day$^{-1}$. This new jet knot was ejected $4pm1$ hours before the beginning of the rise of the radio flare, and $2pm1$ hours before a switch from type-C to type-B X-ray quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs). We show that this jet was ejected over a period of $sim6$ hours and thus its ejection was contemporaneous with the QPO transition. Our new technique locates the original, faster ejection in an observation in which it was previously undetected. With this detection we revised the fits to the proper motions of the ejecta and calculated a jet inclination angle of $(64pm5)^circ$, and jet velocities of $0.97_{-0.09}^{+0.03}c$ for the fast-moving ejecta ($Gamma>2.1$) and $(0.30pm0.05)c$ for the newly-identified slow-moving ejection ($Gamma=1.05pm0.02$). We show that the approaching slow-moving component is predominantly responsible for the radio flare, and is likely linked to the switch from type-C to type-B QPOs, while no definitive signature of ejection was identified for the fast-moving ejecta.
MAXI J1820+070 is a newly-discovered black hole X-ray binary, whose dynamical parameters, namely the black hole mass, the inclination angle and the source distance, have been estimated recently. emph{Insight}-HXMT have observed its entire outburst from March 14th, 2018. In this work, we attempted to estimate the spin parameter~$a_*$, using the continuum-fitting method and applying a fully-relativistic thin disk model to the soft-state spectra obtained by emph{Insight}-HXMT. It is well know that $a_*$ is strongly dependent on three dynamical parameters in this method, and we have examined two sets of parameters. Adopting our preferred parameters: $M$ = $8.48^{+0.79}_{-0.72}~M_odot$, $i=63^circpm3^circ$ and $D=2.96pm0.33$ kpc, we found a slowly-spinning black hole of $a_*=0.14 pm 0.09$ ($1sigma$), which give a prograde spin parameter as majority of other systems show. While it is also possible for the black hole to have a retrograde spin (less than 0) if different dynamical parameters are taken.