Accretion Scenario of MAXI J1820+070 during 2018 Outbursts with Multi-mission Observations

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed spectral and timing analysis of MAXI J1820+070 during its 2018 outbursts, revealing changes in accretion states, reflection features, and QPO behavior using multi-mission X-ray observations.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive multi-mission observational study of the outburst, proposing a scenario for outburst triggering and accretion geometry evolution.

Findings

First outburst remained in low/hard state with truncated disk.

Second outburst was dominated by thermal disk emission.

Reflection signatures indicated a dynamic corona with varying reflection fraction.

Abstract

We present a comprehensive spectral and temporal study of the black hole X-ray transient MAXI J1820+070 during its outbursts in 2018 using Swift/XRT, NICER, NuSTAR and AstroSat observations. The Swift/XRT and NICER spectral study shows a plateau in the light curve with spectral softening (hardness changes from $\sim$ $2.5$ to $2$) followed by a gradual decline without spectral softening during the first outburst. Also, spectral modelling suggests that the first outburst is in the low/hard state throughout with a truncated disk whereas the thermal disk emission dominates during the second outburst. During the entire outburst, strong reflection signature (reflection fraction varies between $\sim$ $0.38 - 3.8$) is observed in the simultaneous wideband (NICER-NuSTAR, XRT-NuSTAR, AstroSat) data due to the presence of a dynamically evolving corona. The NICER timing analysis shows Quasi-periodic Oscillation (QPO) signatures and the characteristic frequency increases (decreases) in the plateau (decline) phase with time during the first outburst. We understand that the reduction of the electron cooling timescale in the corona due to spectral softening and the resonance oscillation with the local dynamical timescale may explain the above behavior of the source during the outburst. Also, we propose a possible scenario of outburst triggering and the associated accretion geometry of the source.