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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Adam IngramORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2023 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.In X-ray observations of hard state black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs), rapid variations in accretion disc and coronal power-law emission are correlated and show Fourier-frequency-dependent time lags. On short (0.1 s) time-scales, these lags are thought to be due to reverberation and therefore may depend strongly on the geometry of the corona. Low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) are variations in X-ray flux that have been suggested to arise because of geometric changes in the corona, possibly due to general relativistic Lense-Thirring precession. Therefore, one might expect the short-term time lags to vary on the QPO time-scale. We performed novel spectral-timing analyses on Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR observations of the BHXRB MAXI J1820+070 during the hard state of its outburst in 2018 to investigate how the short-term time lags between a disc-dominated and a coronal power-law-dominated energy band vary on different time-scales. Our method can distinguish between variability due to the QPO and broad-band noise, and we find a linear correlation between the power-law flux and lag amplitude that is strongest at the QPO frequency. We also introduce a new method to resolve the QPO signal and determine the QPO phase dependence of the flux and lag variations, finding that both are very similar. Our results are consistent with a geometric origin of QPOs, but also provide evidence for a dynamic corona with a geometry varying in a similar way over a broad range of time-scales, not just the QPO time-scale.
Author(s): Bollemeijer N, Uttley P, Basak A, Ingram A, Van Den Eijnden J, Alabarta K, Altamirano D, Arzoumanian Z, Buisson DJK, Fabian AC, Ferrara E, Gendreau K, Homan J, Kara E, Markwardt C, Remillard RA, Sanna A, Steiner JF, Tombesi F, Wang J, Wang Y, Zoghbi A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Year: 2024
Volume: 528
Issue: 1
Pages: 558-576
Print publication date: 01/02/2024
Online publication date: 20/12/2023
Acceptance date: 12/12/2023
Date deposited: 06/02/2024
ISSN (print): 0035-8711
ISSN (electronic): 1365-2966
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3912
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad3912
Data Access Statement: This research has made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. The data underlying this paper are available in HEASARC, at https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/archive.html. Upon publication, a basic reproduction package for the results and figures in this article will be made available on Zenodo.
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