The odyssey of the black hole low mass X-ray binary GX339-4: Five years of dense multi-wavelength monitoring

TL;DR

This study presents a comprehensive five-year multi-wavelength monitoring of the black hole binary GX339-4, revealing detailed jet behavior, state transitions, and ejection events through dense radio, X-ray, and optical data.

Contribution

It provides the longest and densest simultaneous multi-wavelength dataset of GX339-4, including detailed observations of jet ejections and state transitions, and publicly releases the radio maps.

Findings

Detected multiple outbursts and radio flares.

Resolved a transient optically thin ejection.

Analyzed the radio/X-ray correlation across states.

Abstract

We present the longest and the densest quasi-simultaneous radio, X-ray and optical campaign of the black hole low mass X-ray binary GX339-4, covering five years of weekly GX339-4 monitoring with MeerKAT, Swift-XRT and MeerLICHT, respectively. Complementary high frequency radio data with the Australia Telescope Compact Array are presented to track in more detail the evolution of GX339-4 and its transient ejecta. During the five years, GX339-4 has been through two "hard-only" outbursts and two "full" outbursts, allowing us to densely sample the rise, quenching and re-activation of the compact jets. Strong radio flares were also observed close to the transition between the hard and the soft states. Following the radio flare, a transient optically thin ejection was spatially resolved during the 2020 outburst, and was observed for a month. We also discuss the radio/X-ray correlation of GX339-4 during this five year period, which covers several states in detail from the rising phase to the quiescent state. This campaign allowed us to follow ejection events and provide information on the jet proper motion and its intrinsic velocity. With this work we publicly release the weekly MeerKAT L-band radio maps from data taken between September 2018 and October 2023.