Long-term Monitoring of the Black Hole Binary GX 339-4 in the High/Soft State during the 2010 Outburst with MAXI/GSC

TL;DR

This study monitored the black hole candidate GX 339-4 during its 2010 outburst, revealing a stable innermost disk radius and estimating the black hole's mass and spin through spectral analysis over 8 months.

Contribution

It provides the first long-term X-ray spectral monitoring of GX 339-4 in the high/soft state, confirming disk stability and deriving black hole parameters with consistent multi-epoch data.

Findings

Innermost disk radius remains constant at ~61 km during outburst.

Black hole mass estimated at 6.8 +/- 0.2 solar masses.

Black hole spin parameter discussed using relativistic disk models.

Abstract

We present the results of monitoring the Galactic black hole candidate GX 339-4 with the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) / Gas Slit Camera (GSC) in the high/soft state during the outburst in 2010. All the spectra throughout the 8-month period are well reproduced with a model consisting of multi-color disk (MCD) emission and its Comptonization component, whose fraction is <= 25% in the total flux. In spite of the flux variability over a factor of 3, the innermost disk radius is constant at R_in = 61 +/- 2 km for the inclination angle of i = 46 deg and the distance of d=8 kpc. This R_in value is consistent with those of the past measurements with Tenma in the high/soft state. Assuming that the disk extends to the innermost stable circular orbit of a non-spinning black hole, we estimate the black hole mass to be M = 6.8 +/- 0.2 M_sun for i = 46 deg and d = 8 kpc, which is consistent with that estimated from the Suzaku observation of the previous low/hard state. Further combined with the mass function, we obtain the mass constraint of 4.3 M_sun < M < 13.3 M_sun for the allowed range of d = 6-15 kpc and i < 60 deg. We also discuss the spin parameter of the black hole in GX 339-4 by applying relativistic accretion disk models to the Swift/XRT data.