A jet model for Galactic black-hole X-ray sources: the cutoff energy-phase-lag correlation

TL;DR

This paper presents a jet model explaining the observed correlation between cutoff energy and phase lag in black-hole X-ray binaries, highlighting the role of Comptonization in the jet during state transitions.

Contribution

The study introduces a modified jet model with an acceleration zone that naturally explains the observed cutoff energy-phase lag correlation in black-hole X-ray binaries.

Findings

The model reproduces the decreasing cutoff energy during brightening.

The model explains the increasing phase lag during the same period.

Comptonization in the jet accounts for both observed quantities.

Abstract

Galactic black-hole X-ray binaries emit a compact, optically thick, mildy relativistic radio jet when they are in the hard and hard-intermediate states. In a series of papers, we have developed a jet model and have shown, through Monte Carlo simulations, that our model can explain many observational results. In this work, we investigate one more constraining relationship between the cutoff energy and the phase lag during the early stages of an X-ray outburst of the black-hole X-ray binary GX 339-4: the cutoff energy decreases while the phase lag increases during the brightening of the hard state. We demonstrate that our jet model naturally explains the above correlation, with a minor modification consisting of introducing an acceleration zone at the base of the jet. The observed correlation between the cutoff energy and the phase lag suggests that the lags are produced by the hard component. Here we show that this correlation arises naturally if Comptonization in the jet produces these two quantities.