Observations of a radio-bright, X-ray obscured GRS 1915+105
The Galactic black hole transient GRS 1915+105 is famous for its markedly variable X-ray and radio behaviour, and for being the archetypal galactic source of relativistic jets. It entered an X-ray outburst in 1992 and has been active ever since. Since 2018 GRS 1915+105 has declined into an extended...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.INTA Repositorio Digital del Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.inta.es:20.500.12666/538 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/503/1/152/6149165 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12666/538 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Accretion Accretion Discs Black Hole Physics Stars: jets X rays: binaries |
| Sumario: | The Galactic black hole transient GRS 1915+105 is famous for its markedly variable X-ray and radio behaviour, and for being the archetypal galactic source of relativistic jets. It entered an X-ray outburst in 1992 and has been active ever since. Since 2018 GRS 1915+105 has declined into an extended low-flux X-ray plateau, occasionally interrupted by multiwavelength flares. Here, we report the radio and X-ray properties of GRS 1915+105 collected in this new phase, and compare the recent data to historic observations. We find that while the X-ray emission remained unprecedentedly low for most of the time following the decline in 2018, the radio emission shows a clear mode change half way through the extended X-ray plateau in 2019 June: from low flux (∼3 mJy) and limited variability, to marked flaring with fluxes two orders of magnitude larger. GRS 1915+105 appears to have entered a low-luminosity canonical hard state, and then transitioned to an unusual accretion phase, characterized by heavy X-ray absorption/obscuration. Hence, we argue that a local absorber hides from the observer the accretion processes feeding the variable jet responsible for the radio flaring. The radio–X-ray correlation suggests that the current low X-ray flux state may be a signature of a super-Eddington state akin to the X-ray binaries SS433 or V404 Cyg. |
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