Dark jets in the soft X-ray state of black hole binaries?

Drappeau, S.; Malzac, J.; Coriat, M.; Rodríguez, J.; Belloni, T.; Belmont, R.; Clavel, M.; Chakravorty, Susmita; Corbel, S.; Ferreira, Jonathan; Gandhi, P.; Henri, G.; Petrucci, P.-O.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stw3277

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…In the soft X-ray state instead, jets appear to be quenched at all frequencies (see, e.g., Russell et al 2011) in favor of disk winds (Ponti et al 2012), probably due to the suppression of the magnetic field caused by the geometrically thin accretion disk that resides close to the BH (see, e.g., Meier 2001). Alternatively, in line with the internal shock model for BHB jets by Malzac (2013), during the soft state, the jet might still be present but is dark because of the lack of variability in the disk (Drappeau et al 2017). In some cases, the jet break frequency has been found to move from infrared to radio frequencies as the X-ray spectrum of the source softens, and then come back again to the infrared band at the end of the outburst, when the spectrum gets harder (Russell et al 2013a(Russell et al , 2014Diaz Trigo et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Similar to what was suggested by Gandhi et al (2010), a model that relates possible perturbations in the accretion flow to variability in the jet might explain the observed variability of our light curves. Such a model has been developed in Malzac (2013) and Malzac (2014; see also Drappeau et al 2017). In this scenario, a strongly variable accretion flow could inject nonnegligible velocity fluctuations at the base of the jet, which would drive internal shocks at large distances from the BH, where leptons are accelerated, giving rise to strongly variable synchrotron emission, which would in turn affect the radio-infrared emission of the system.…”

Section: Short Time Variability: Possible Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Wildly Flickering Jet in the Black Hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1535–571

Baglio

Russell²,

Casella

et al. 2018

ApJ

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We report on the results of optical, near-infrared (NIR), and mid-infrared observations of the black hole X-ray binary candidate (BHB) MAXI J1535-571 during its 2017/2018 outburst. During the first part of the outburst (MJD 58004-58012), the source shows an optical-NIR spectrum that is consistent with an optically thin synchrotron power law from a jet. After MJD 58015, however, the source faded considerably, the drop in flux being much more evident at lower frequencies. Before the fading, we measure a dereddened flux density of 100 mJy in the mid-infrared, making MAXI J1535-571 one of the brightest mid-infrared BHBs known so far. A significant softening of the X-ray spectrum is evident contemporaneous with the infrared fade. We interpret it as being due to the suppression of the jet emission, similar to the accretion-ejection coupling seen in other BHBs. However, MAXI J1535-571 did not transition smoothly to the soft state, instead showing X-ray hardness deviations associated with infrared flaring. We also present the first mid-IR variability study of a BHB on minute timescales, with a fractional rms variability of the light curves of ∼15%-22%, which is similar to that expected from the internal shock jet model, and much higher than the optical fractional rms (7%). These results represent an excellent case of multiwavelength jet spectral timing and demonstrate how rich, multiwavelength time-resolved data of X-ray binaries over accretion state transitions can help in refining models of the disk-jet connection and jet launching in these systems.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Short Time Variability: Possible Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Wildly Flickering Jet in the Black Hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1535–571

Baglio

Russell²,

Casella

et al. 2018

ApJ

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“…Drappeau et al (2015) first explored this idea by using the internal shock code ishem (Malzac 2014) to show that an observed radio-IR jet SED from the black hole binary GX 339-4 during the hard state can be well reproduced, under the assumption that the power spectrum of the jet fluctuations is identical to the fluctuations in the disc observed in X-rays. Drappeau et al (2017) suggested that the quenching of the radio emission in the soft X-ray spectral state could be associated with the much weaker X-ray variability present in this state. Dark jets could be present in the soft state carrying a similar power as in the hard state, but weaker shocks due to the smaller amplitude of the velocity fluctuations mean the jet would be undetectable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling the compact jet in MAXI J1836-194 with disc-driven shocks

Péault

Malzac

Coriat

et al. 2018

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The black hole candidate MAXI J1836-194 was discovered in 2011 when it went into an outburst, and was the subject of numerous, quasi-simultaneous, multi-wavelength observations in the radio, infrared, optical and X-rays. In this paper, we model its multi-wavelength radio to optical spectral energy distributions (SEDs) with an internal shock jet model. The jet emission is modelled on five dates of the outburst, during which the source is in the hard and hard intermediate X-ray spectral states. The model assumes that fluctuations of the jet velocity are driven by the variability in the accretion flow which is traced by the observed X-ray timing properties of the source. While the global shape of the SED is well reproduced by this model for all the studied observations, the variations in bolometric flux and typical energies require at least two parameters to evolve during the outburst. Here we investigate variations of the jet power and mean Lorentz factor, which are both found to increase with the source luminosity. Our results are compatible with the evolution of the jet Lorentz factor reported in earlier studies of this source. However, due to the large degeneracy of the parameters of the ishem model, our proposed scenario is not unique.

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“…The internal shock model has initially been invoked by Rees (1978) to explain the emissions by the knots in the jets of active galactic nuclei and the internal shock model also explains the prompt emissions of gamma-ray bursts (Piran 1999(Piran , 2004. Malzac (2014) and Drappeau et al (2015) have examined to what extent the emissions of the relativistic jets of microquasars can be explained by internal shocks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrostatic and magnetic instabilities in the transition layer of a collisionless weakly relativistic pair shock

Dieckmann

Bret

2017

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Energetic electromagnetic emissions by astrophysical jets like those that are launched during the collapse of a massive star and trigger gamma-ray bursts are partially attributed to relativistic internal shocks. The shocks are mediated in the collisionless plasma of such jets by the filamentation instability of counterstreaming particle beams. The filamentation instability grows fastest only if the beams move at a relativistic relative speed. We model here with a particle-in-cell simulation, the collision of two cold pair clouds at the speed c/2 (c: speed of light). We demonstrate that the two-stream instability outgrows the filamentation instability for this speed and is thus responsible for the shock formation. The incomplete thermalization of the upstream plasma by its quasi-electrostatic waves allows other instabilities to grow. A shock transition layer forms, in which a filamentation instability modulates the plasma far upstream of the shock. The inflowing upstream plasma is progressively heated by a twostream instability closer to the shock and compressed to the expected downstream density by the Weibel instability. The strong magnetic field due to the latter is confined to a layer 10 electron skin depths wide.Key words: instabilities -plasmas -shock waves -methods: numerical. I N T RO D U C T I O NBinaries with an accreting compact object, which are known as microquasars, can emit relativistic jets (Falcke & Biermann 1996;Mirabel & Rodriguez 1999;Madejski & Sikora 2016). The jets are composed of electrons, positrons (Siegert et al. 2016) and an unknown fraction of ions and they are sources of intense electromagnetic radiation, which can be observed over astronomical distances. Some of this radiation is attributed to synchrotron emissions by relativistic electrons and positrons that gyrate in a strong magnetic field. The source of the jet's magnetic field is under debate. A plasma is a good conductor and, hence, the jet will carry with it the strong magnetic field that is present at its base. Instabilities, which develop in a non-equilibrium collisionless plasma, can also magnetize the jet.Instabilities can be driven by a large variation of the jet's mean velocity, which is caused by a non-uniform plasma acceleration efficiency of its engine. A velocity variation steepens if a faster plasma cloud catches up with a slower one, which ultimately results in the formation of an internal shock in the jet. Shocks in the jet heat up its plasma and compress the magnetic field. We expect that these E-mail: mark.e.dieckmann@liu.se internal shocks are powerful sources of electromagnetic emissions. The internal shock model has initially been invoked by Rees (1978) to explain the emissions by the knots in the jets of active galactic nuclei and the model also explains the prompt emissions of gammaray bursts (Piran 1999(Piran , 2004. Malzac (2014) and Drappeau et al. (2015) have examined to what extent the emissions of the relativistic jets of microquasars can be explained by internal shocks.The large mean-free pa...

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Dark jets in the soft X-ray state of black hole binaries?

Cited by 17 publications

References 59 publications

A Wildly Flickering Jet in the Black Hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1535–571

A Wildly Flickering Jet in the Black Hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1535–571

Modelling the compact jet in MAXI J1836-194 with disc-driven shocks

Electrostatic and magnetic instabilities in the transition layer of a collisionless weakly relativistic pair shock

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