English

Transitions of black hole transients to the low/hard state under the microscope

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We characterized the evolution of spectral and temporal properties of several Galactic black hole transients observed between 1996-2001 using the data from well sampled PCA observations close to the transition to the low/hard state. We showed that the changes in temporal properties are much sharper than the changes in the spectral properties, and it is much easier to identify a state transition with the temporal properties. The ratio of the power-law flux to the total flux in the 3-25 keV band increases close to the transition, and the power-law flux shows a sharp increase along with the changes in temporal properties during the transitions. In this work we concentrate on the decay of two recent outbursts, from 4U 1543-47, and H1743-322 and discuss the state transitions by tracking their daily, and sometimes hourly evolution, and interpret results based on the expectations from our earlier observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0312465,
  title  = {Transitions of black hole transients to the low/hard state under the microscope},
  author = {E. Kalemci and J. A. Tomsick and R. E. Rothschild and K. Pottschmidt and P. Kaaret},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0312465},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 6 figures, To appear in the proceedings of X-Ray Timing 2003: Rossi and Beyond, ed. P. Kaaret, F. K. Lamb, & J. H. Swank (Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics)