QPOs from Random X-ray Bursts around Rotating Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper models quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) originating from light echoes of X-ray flares near rotating black holes, extending previous work to three dimensions and predicting robust QPO signals across different black hole systems.

Contribution

It introduces a 3D photon emission and orbit model for QPOs around rotating black holes, highlighting the universal presence of these signals due to spacetime curvature effects.

Findings

QPOs occur at ~kHz for stellar-mass black holes

QPOs occur at ~mHz for active galactic nuclei

QPOs are caused by photon bunching from frame-dragging effects

Abstract

We continue our earlier studies of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the power spectra of accreting, rapidly-rotating black holes that originate from the geometric "light echoes" of X-ray flares occurring within the black hole ergosphere. Our present work extends our previous treatment to three-dimensional photon emission and orbits to allow for arbitrary latitudes in the positions of the distant observers and the X-ray sources in place of the mainly equatorial positions and photon orbits of the earlier consideration. Following the trajectories of a large number of photons we calculate the response functions of a given geometry and use them to produce model light curves which we subsequently analyze to compute their power spectra and autocorrelation functions. In the case of an optically-thin environment, relevant to advection-dominated accretion flows, we consistently find QPOs at frequencies of order of ~kHz for stellar-mass black hole candidates while order of ~mHz for typical active galactic nuclei (~10^7 Msun) for a wide range of viewing angles (30 to 80deg) from X-ray sources predominantly concentrated toward the equator within the ergosphere. As in our previous treatment, here too, the QPO signal is produced by the frame-dragging of the photons by the rapidly-rotating black hole, which results in photon "bunches" separated by constant time-lags, the result of multiple photon orbits around the hole. Our model predicts for various source/observer configurations the robust presence of a new class of QPOs, which is inevitably generic to curved spacetime structure in rotating black hole systems.