Early Phase Detection and Coverage of Extragalactic and Galactic Black Hole X-ray Transients with the SKA

TL;DR

The paper discusses how the SKA radio telescope will enable early detection and coverage of black hole transients, providing new insights into accretion processes and jet formation in both galactic and extragalactic sources.

Contribution

It highlights SKA's unique capability to detect early phases of black hole transients and explore non-stationary accretion regimes, advancing understanding of disk-jet coupling.

Findings

SKA will detect early rising phases of black hole transients.

It will cover a wide range of mass accretion rates and their changes.

Enables new studies of disk-jet coupling in dynamic accretion states.

Abstract

SKA's large field of view and high sensitivity at low frequencies will provide almost a complete coverage of the very early rising phase of extragalactic and Galactic transients which undergo a flare or outburst due to an abrupt accretion onto either supermassive (such as tidal disruption events, TDEs) or stellar mass black hole transients (such as black hole LMXB) , when their broadband emission is supposed to be jet-dominated at low luminosities, allowing SKA to be the first facility to make source discoveries and to send out alerts for follow-up ground or space observations as compared with the sensitivity of future X-ray wide-field-view monitoring. On the other hand, due to extremely large rate-of-change in the mass accretion rate during the rising phase of TDE flares or transient outbursts, SKA will be able to cover an extremely large range of the mass accretion rate as well as its rate-of-change not accessible with observations in persistent black hole systems, which will shape our understanding of disk-jet coupling in accreting black holes in the non-stationary accretion regimes.