English

Accretion Disk Parameters determined from the great 2015 flare of OJ 287

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-09-11 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

In the binary black hole model of OJ 287 the secondary black hole orbits a much more massive primary, and impacts on the primary accretion disk at predictable times. We update the parameters of the disk, the viscosity α\alpha and the mass accretion rate m˙\dot m. We find α=0.26±0.1\alpha=0.26 \pm 0.1 and m˙=0.08±0.04\dot m = 0.08 \pm 0.04 in Eddington units. The former value is consistent with Coroniti (1981) and the latter with Marscher and Jorstad (2011). Predictions are made for the 2019 July 30 superflare in OJ 287. We expect that it will take place simultaneously at the Spitzer infrared channels as well as in the optical and that therefore the timing of the flare in optical can be accurately determined from Spitzer observations. We also discuss in detail the light curve of the 2015 flare and find that the radiating volume has regions where bremsstrahlung dominates as well as regions that radiate primarily in synchrotron radiation. The former region produces the unpolarised first flare while the latter region gives rise to a highly polarized second flare.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.11011,
  title  = {Accretion Disk Parameters determined from the great 2015 flare of OJ 287},
  author = {Mauri J. Valtonen and Staszek Zola and Pauli Pihajoki and Sissi Enestam and Harry J. Lehto and Lankeswar Dey and Achamveedu Gopakumar and Marek Drozdz and Waldemar Ogloza and Michal Zejmo and Alok C. Gupta and Tapio Pursimo and Stefano Ciprini and Mark Kidger and Kari Nilsson and Andrei Berdyugin and Vilppu Piirola and Helen Jermak and Rene Hudec and Seppo Laine},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.11011},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

12 pages, 4 figures, to appear in ApJ