AstroSat view of GRS 1915+105 during the Soft State: Detection of HFQPOs and estimation of Mass and Spin

TL;DR

This study analyzes AstroSat observations of GRS 1915+105 during its soft state, detecting high-frequency QPOs, modeling the broadband spectra, and estimating the black hole's mass and near-maximal spin.

Contribution

First detailed AstroSat analysis of GRS 1915+105's soft state, detecting HFQPOs and estimating the black hole's mass and spin using spectral modeling.

Findings

HFQPOs detected at 67.96-70.62 Hz with 0.83-1.90% rms

Black hole mass estimated at 12.44-13.09 solar masses

Black hole spin estimated at 0.990-0.997

Abstract

We report the results of AstroSat observations of GRS 1915$+$105 obtained using 100 ks guaranteed-time (GT) during the soft state. The Color-Color Diagram (CCD) indicates a variability class of $\delta$ with the detection of High Frequency QPO (HFQPO) in the power density spectra (PDS). The HFQPO is seen to vary in the frequency range of $67.96 - 70.62$ Hz with percentage rms $\sim 0.83 - 1.90$ % and significance varying from $1.63 - 7.75$. The energy dependent power spectra show that the HFQPO features are dominant only in $6 - 25$ keV energy band. The broadband energy spectra ($0.7 - 50$ keV) of SXT (Soft X-ray Telescope) and LAXPC (Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter) modelled with nthComp and powerlaw imply that the source has an extended corona in addition to a compact 'Comptonizing corona' that produces high energy emission and exhibits HFQPOs. The broadband spectral modelling indicates that the source spectra are well described by thermal Comptonization with electron temperature (kT$_{\rm e}$) of $2.07 - 2.43$ keV and photon-index ($\Gamma_{\rm nth}$) between $1.73-2.45$ with an additional powerlaw component of photon-index ($\Gamma_{\rm PL}$) between $2.94 - 3.28$. The norm of nthComp component is high ($\sim 8$) during the presence of strong HFQPO and low ($\sim 3$) during the absence of HFQPO. Further, we model the energy spectra with the kerrbb model to estimate the accretion rate, mass and spin of the source. Our findings indicate that the source accretes at super-Eddington rate of $1.17-1.31~ \dot{M}_{\rm Edd}$. Moreover, we find the mass and spin of the source as $12.44 - 13.09~M_{\odot}$ and $0.990-0.997$ with $90\%$ confidence suggesting that GRS 1915$+$105 is a maximally rotating stellar mass X-ray binary black hole source.