OJ~287: a new BH mass estimate of the secondary

TL;DR

This study analyzes X-ray flaring activity in OJ 287 to refine the secondary black hole's mass estimate, using spectral modeling and scaling methods based on BH X-ray binaries, concluding a mass of about 1.25x10^8 solar masses.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel application of spectral index correlation and scaling methods to estimate the black hole mass in OJ 287 from X-ray data.

Findings

Black hole mass in OJ 287 is approximately 1.25x10^8 solar masses.

X-ray spectral states can be modeled with the BMC model across all states.

The size of the Compton cloud is about 10^{13} cm, supporting the mass estimate.

Abstract

We presented a study of outburst activity in the BL Lacertae source OJ~287, observed extensively with the X-ray telescope (XRT) onboard Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. We demonstrated that the results of our analysis of X-ray flaring activity using the Swift/XRT data allow to refine the key characteristics of the OJ~287 secondary (its nature and mass). We discovered that the energy spectra in all spectral states can be fitted using the XSPEC Bulk Motion Comptonization (BMC) model. As a result we found that the X-ray photon index of the BMC model, Gamma correlates with the mass accretion rate, dot. We established that Gamma increases monotonically with dot from the low-hard state, Gamma~ 1.5 to the high-soft state, Gamma~2.8 and finally saturates. The index behavior was similar to that in a number of black hole (BH) candidates in which we showed that its saturation was an observational evidence of the presence of a BH. Based on this correlation, we applied a scaling method and determined that a secondary BH mass in OJ~287 is about ~1.25x10^8 solar masses, using the well-studied X-ray BH binaries XTE~1550--564, H~1743--322, 4U~1630--47, GRS~1915+105 as well as extragalactic BHs ESO~243--49 and M101~ULX--1, as reference sources. Also using the power spectrum analysis we inferred the size of the Compton cloud L_{CC}~ 10^{13} cm where X-ray spectra were formed. Using this value of L_{CC} we confirmed that a BH mass of the secondary in OJ~287 was of order of 10^8 solar masses as we derived using the index, Gamma-correlation (the scaling method) with respect of the mass accretion rate.