Temporal X-ray Properties of Galactic Black Hole Candidates: Observational Data and Theoretical Models

TL;DR

This paper reviews observational data and theoretical models of the temporal X-ray properties of Galactic black hole candidates, emphasizing how combined spectral and temporal analysis can reveal physical characteristics of accretion processes.

Contribution

It discusses recent models based on thermal Comptonization and highlights the importance of simultaneous spectral and temporal studies for understanding X-ray emission mechanisms.

Findings

Temporal properties provide insights into the size and density structure of the Comptonizing region.

Recent models quantitatively match observed temporal properties.

Combined spectral and temporal analysis helps break degeneracies in physical parameter estimation.

Abstract

I review the observed temporal X-ray properties of Galactic black hole candidates and the status of theoretical modeling of these properties. Like spectral X-ray properties, which has so far attracted most of the attention, the temporal properties, such as power spectral density, hard X-ray time lags, and coherence functions, contain information on some of the same physical properties of inverse Comptonization processes, which are generally believed to be responsible for producing hard X-ray emission in black hole candidates. In addition, the temporal properties add new information about the size of the Comptonizing region and perhaps its density structure. Therefore, the spectral and temporal properties taken together may help break the degeneracy, intrinsic to most spectral studies, in determining the temperature and optical depth of hot electrons. Moreover, significant insights might be gained into the dynamics of mass accretion in black hole candidates from the inferred density structure of accreted gas (from the temporal properties). Unfortunately, until very recently little has been done to {\it quantitatively} model the observed temporal properties of black hole candidates. I will discuss the recently proposed models, which have been formulated in the context of thermal Comptonization, and compare them to the data. Emphasis will be made on simultaneous studies of the observed spectral and temporal properties, the ultimate approach to studying X-ray production mechanisms in Galactic black holes.