Péridier Library Abstract Archive

Abstract No. UT 345

Title: The Physics of Black Hole X-Ray Transients
Author(s): J. Craig Wheeler, S.-W. Kim, M. D. Moscoso, M. Kusunose (Department of Astronomy, University of Texas), S. Mineshige (Department of Astronomy, Kyoto University)
Keywords:
E-Mail: Craig Wheeler (to request a full copy of this paper)
Preprint: 9601003 Document source or PostScript
Release date: 01/17/96 15:47:22
Publication status: to appear in the Kyoto Workshop on the Basic Physics of Accretion Disks
Comments: 6 pages, 0 figures

The most plausible mechanism for triggering the outburst of black hole candidate X-ray transients is the ionization thermal instability. The disk instability models can give the observed mass flow in quiescence, but not the X-ray spectrum. Self-irradiation of the disk in outburst may not lead to X-ray reprocessing as the dominant source of optical light, but may play a role in the "reflare." The hard power-law spectrum and radio bursts may be non-thermal processes driven by the flow of pair-rich plasma from the disk at early times and due to the formation of a pair-rich plasma corona at late times. The repeated outbursts suggest some sort of clock, but it is unlikely that it has anything to do with a simple X-ray heating of the companion star.