WATCHDOG: A Comprehensive All-Sky Database of Galactic Black Hole X-ray Binaries

TL;DR

This paper presents WATCHDOG, a comprehensive database of Galactic black hole X-ray binaries from 1996 to 2015, analyzing their outburst behaviors, especially the prevalence of 'hard-only' outbursts, and discussing implications for their population and evolution.

Contribution

The paper introduces the WATCHDOG database, compiling two decades of black hole X-ray binary activity, and provides the first extensive statistical analysis of outburst properties and behaviors.

Findings

Approximately 40% of outbursts are 'hard-only' and do not reach the thermally dominant state.

'Hard-only' outbursts are common and not a recent phenomenon.

Implications for the luminosity function and mass-transfer history of Galactic BHXBs.

Abstract

With the advent of more sensitive all-sky instruments, the transient Universe is being probed in greater depth than ever before. Taking advantage of available resources, we have established a comprehensive database of black hole (and black hole candidate) X-ray binary (BHXB) activity between 1996 and 2015 as revealed by all-sky instruments, scanning surveys, and select narrow-field X-ray instruments aboard the INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), Monitor of All-Sky X-ray Image (MAXI), Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), and Swift telescopes; the Whole-sky Alberta Time-resolved Comprehensive black-Hole Database Of the Galaxy or WATCHDOG. Over the past two decades, we have detected 132 transient outbursts, tracked and classified behavior occurring in 47 transient and 10 persistently accreting BHs, and performed a statistical study on a number of outburst properties across the Galactic population. We find that outbursts undergone by BHXBs that do not reach the thermally dominant accretion state make up a substantial fraction ($\sim$ 40%) of the Galactic transient BHXB outburst sample over the past $\sim20$ years. Our findings suggest that this "hard-only" behavior, observed in transient and persistently accreting BHXBs, is neither a rare nor recent phenomenon and may be indicative of an underlying physical process, relatively common among binary BHs, involving the mass-transfer rate onto the BH remaining at a low level rather than increasing as the outburst evolves. We discuss how the larger number of these "hard-only" outbursts and detected outbursts in general have significant implications for both the luminosity function and mass-transfer history of the Galactic BHXB population.