The jet kinetic power, distance and inclination of GRS 1915+105

TL;DR

This paper calculates the minimum jet kinetic power of GRS 1915+105's ejections, constraining its distance, black-hole mass, and jet composition, revealing the importance of ions in jet power estimates.

Contribution

It introduces a new technique for calculating minimum jet kinetic power and applies it to GRS 1915+105, refining estimates of distance, mass, and jet composition.

Findings

Jet power increases with distance, constraining the source to <10 kpc.

Including ions in the jet model significantly affects power estimates.

Derived black-hole mass and inclination are consistent with previous measurements.

Abstract

We apply a recently developed technique of calculating the minimum jet kinetic power to the major mass ejections of the black-hole binary GRS 1915+105 observed in radio wavelengths in 1994 and 1997. We derive for them the distance-dependent minimum power, and the corresponding mass flow rate and the total energy and mass content. We find that a fast increase of the jet power with the increasing distance combined with the jet power estimates based on the bolometric luminosity imply the source distance is <10 kpc. If the jet in GRS 1915 contains ions, their bulk motion dominates the jet power, which was either neglected or not properly taken into account earlier. We also reconsider the parameters of the binary, and derive the current best estimates of the distance-dependent black-hole mass and the inclination based on existing measurements combined with the kinematic constraints from the mass ejections. We also find the measurement of the donor radius of Steeghs et al. implies the distance to the system of <10 kpc, in agreement with the estimate from the jet power.