Disc corona radii and QPO frequencies in black hole binaries: testing Lense-Thirring precession origin

TL;DR

This study models accretion flows in black hole binaries to test if low-frequency QPOs originate from Lense-Thirring precession, finding a tight correlation between disc radius and QPO frequency consistent with this theory.

Contribution

Introduces a new energy-conserving accretion flow model tailored for stellar-mass black holes, linking spectral parameters with QPO frequencies to test Lense-Thirring precession.

Findings

Disc radius anti-correlates with QPO frequency.

Results support Lense-Thirring precession as the QPO origin.

Model fits hundreds of RXTE spectra.

Abstract

Stellar-mass black hole binary systems in the luminous X-ray states show a strong quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) in their Comptonised emission. The frequency of this feature correlates with the ratio of a disc to Comptonised emission rather than with total luminosity. Hence it changes dramatically during spectral transitions between the hard and soft states. Its amplitude is also strongest in these intermediate states, making them an important test of QPO models. However, these have complex spectra which generally require a disc and two separate Comptonisation components, making it difficult to uniquely derive the spectral parameters. We build a new energy-conserving model of the accretion flow, SSsed model, which assumes a fixed radial emissivity but with a changing emission mechanism. This is similar to the agnsed model in xspec but tuned to be more suitable for stellar mass black holes. It uses a combination of the disc luminosity and temperature to constrain the inner radius of the (colour temperature corrected) blackbody disc, separating this from the more complex Comptonisation spectra emitted inwards of this radius. We show a pilot study of this model fit to hundreds of RXTE spectra of the black hole binary XTE J1550-564. We show that the derived disc radius tightly anti-correlates with the central frequencies of the low-frequency QPO detected in the same observations. The relation is consistent with the quantitative predictions of Lense-Thirring precession of the entire inner Comptonisation regions for the assumed system parameters. This supports the scenario that low-frequency QPOs are caused by Lense-Thirring precession.