We analytically derive a relativistic variable Eddington factor in the relativistic radiative flow, and found that the Eddington factor depends on the {\it velocity gradient} as well as the flow velocity. When the gaseous flow is accelerated and there is a velocity gradient, there also exists a density gradient. As a result, an unobstructed viewing range by a comoving observer, where the optical depth measured from the comoving observer is unity, is not a sphere, but becomes an oval shape elongated in the direction of the flow; we call it a {\it one-tau photo-oval}. For the comoving observer, an inner wall of the photo-oval generally emits at a non-uniform intensity, and has a relative velocity. Thus, the comoving radiation fields observed by the comoving observer becomes {\it anisotropic}, and the Eddington factor must deviate from the value for the isotropic radiation fields. % In the case of a plane-parallel vertical flow, we examine the photo-oval and obtain the Eddington factor. In the sufficiently optically thick linear regime, the Eddington factor is analytically expressed as $f (τ, β, \frac{dβ}{dτ}) = {1/3} (1 + {16/15} \frac{dβ}{dτ})$, where $τ$ is the optical depth and $β$ ($=v/c$) is the flow speed normalized by the speed of light. %i.e., the Eddington factor depends on the velocity gradient. We also examine the linear and semi-linear regimes, and found that the Eddington factor generally depends both on the velocity and its gradient.
X-ray reverberation is a powerful technique which maps out the structure of the inner regions of accretion disks around black holes using the echoes of the coronal emission reflected by the disk. While the theory of X-ray reverberation has been developed almost exclusively for standard thin disks, recently reverberation lags have been observed from likely super-Eddington accretion sources such as the jetted tidal disruption event Swift J1644+57. In this paper, we extend X-ray reverberation studies into the super-Eddington accretion regime, focusing on investigating the lags in the Fe Kα line r…
Within the first 10 days after Swift discovered the jetted tidal disruption event (TDE) Sw J1644+57, simultaneous observations in the radio, near-infrared, optical, X-ray and gamma-ray bands were carried out. These multiwavelength data provide a unique opportunity to constrain the emission mechanism and make-up of a relativistic super-Eddington jet. We consider an exhaustive variety of radiation mechanisms for the generation of X-rays in this TDE, and rule out many processes such as SSC, photospheric and proton synchrotron. The infrared to gamma-ray data for Sw J1644+57 are consistent with syn…
We construct models of static, spherically symmetric shells supported by the radiation flux of a luminous neutron star in the Schwarzschild metric. The atmospheres are disconnected from the star and levitate above its surface. Gas pressure and density inversion appear in the inner region of these atmospheres, which is a purely relativistic phenomenon. We account for the scattering opacity dependence on temperature and utilize the relativistic M1 closure scheme for the radiation tensor, hence allowing for a fully GR-consistent treatment of the photon flux and radiation tensor anisotropy. In thi…
Three-Dimensional General Relativistic Radiation Magnetohydrodynamical Simulation of Super-Eddington Accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 Closure
Dynamic shocks powered by a wide, relativistic, super-Eddington outflow launched by an accreting neutron star in the mid-20th century
University of Oxford(牛津大学);University of Cape Town(开普敦大学);Rhodes University(罗德岛大学);INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma(意大利国家天体物理研究所罗马天文台);Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics(马克斯·普朗克核物理研究所);University of Amsterdam(阿姆斯特丹大学)
We analyze seven NICER and NuSTAR epochs of the black hole X-ray binary GX 339-4 in the hard state during its two most recent hard-only outbursts in 2017 and 2019. These observations cover the 1-100 keV unabsorbed luminosities between 0.3% and 2.1% of the Eddington limit. With NICER's negligible pile-up, high count rate and unprecedented time resolution, we perform a spectral-timing analysis and spectral modeling using relativistic and distant reflection models. Our spectral fitting shows that as the inner disk radius moves inwards, the thermal disk emission increases in flux and temperature, …
1ES 1927+654 is a paradigm-defying AGN and one of the most peculiar X-ray nuclear transients. In early 2018, this well-known AGN underwent a changing-look event, in which broad optical emission lines appeared and the optical flux increased. Yet, by July 2018, the X-ray flux had dropped by over two orders of magnitude, indicating a dramatic change to the inner accretion flow. With three years of observations with NICER, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR, we present the X-ray evolution of 1ES 1927+654, which can be broken into three phases-(1) an early super-Eddington phase with rapid variability in X-ray …
Sub-relativistic Outflow and Hours-Timescale Large-amplitude X-ray Dips during Super-Eddington Accretion onto a Low-mass Massive Black Hole in the Tidal Disruption Event AT2022lri
We model non-thermal emission spectrum of the extremely sub-Eddington X-ray binary system A0620-00. It is believed that this non-thermal emission is produced by a radiatively inefficient "quiescent" accretion onto a stellar-mass black hole present in the system. We post-process GRMHD simulations with multiwavelength, fully polarized, relativistic radiative transfer calculations to predict broadband spectra and emission polarization levels for a range of electron models and accretion rates. We find that a model with strong coupling of electrons and ions in the accretion disk and accretion rate …
The recent discoveries of Swift J1644+57 and J2058+05 show that tidal disruption events (TDEs) can launch relativistic jets. Super-Eddington accretion produces a strong radiation field of order Eddington luminosity. In a jetted TDE, electrons in the jet will inverse-Compton scatter the external radiation field from the accretion disk and wind. Motivated by observations of thermal optical-UV spectra in Swift J2058+05 and several other TDEs, we assume the spectrum of the external radiation field intercepted by the relativistic jet to be blackbody. Hot electrons in the jet scatter this thermal ra…
Modeling reflection spectra of super-Eddington X-ray sources
Fudan University(复旦大学);New Uzbekistan University(新乌兹别克斯坦大学);Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute(乌鲁格别克天文研究所);Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen(蒂宾根大学天文与天体物理研究所);Institute for Advanced Studies, New Uzbekistan University(新乌兹别克斯坦大学高等研究院);University of Warwick(华威大学);Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge(剑桥大学天文学研究所)
Matter falling onto black holes is hot, fully ionized and has to be necessarily transonic. Since the electrons are responsible for radiative cooling via processes like synchrotron, bremsstrahlung and inverse-Compton, therefore the electron gas and proton gas are supposed to settle into two separate temperature distribution. But the problem with two-temperature flow is that, there is one more variable than the number of equations. Accretion flow in its simplest form is radial, which has two constants of motion. While, the flow variables are, the radial bulk three-velocity, electron and proton t…
We report the results from a recent 133 ks XMM-Newton observation of a highly super-Eddington narrow-line Type-1 QSO RX J0439.6-5311. This source has one of the steepest AGN hard X-ray slopes, in addition to a prominent and smooth soft X-ray excess. Strong variations are found throughout the 0.3 to 10 keV energy range on all time-scales covered by the observation, with the soft excess mainly showing low frequency variations below 0.1 mHz while the hard X-rays show stronger variability at higher frequencies. We perform a full set of spectral-timing analysis on the X-ray data, including a simult…
For an accurate treatment of the shock wave propagation in high-energy astrophysical phenomena, such as supernova shock breakouts, gamma-ray bursts and accretion disks, knowledge of radiative transfer plays a crucial role. In this paper we consider one-dimensional (1D) special relativistic radiation hydrodynamics by solving the Boltzmann equation for radiative transfer. The structure of a radiative shock is calculated for a number of shock tube problems, including strong shock waves, and relativistic- and radiation-dominated cases. Calculations are performed using an iterative technique that c…
Ultraluminous pulsars are a definite proof that persistent super-Eddington accretion occurs in nature. They support the scenario according to which most Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) are super-Eddington accretors of stellar mass rather than sub-Eddington intermediate mass black holes. An important prediction of theories of supercritical accretion is the existence of powerful outflows of moderately ionized gas at mildly relativistic speeds. In practice, the spectral resolution of X-ray gratings such as RGS onboard XMM-Newton is required to resolve their observational signatures in ULXs. Us…
We study the relativistic, inviscid, advective accretion flow around the black holes and investigate a key feature of the accretion flow, namely the shock waves. We observe that the shock-induced accretion solutions are prevalent and such solutions are commonly obtained for a wide range of the flow parameters, such as energy (${\cal E}$) and angular momentum ($λ$), around the black holes of spin value $0\le a_{\rm k} < 1$. When the shock is dissipative in nature, a part of the accretion energy is released through the upper and lower surfaces of the disc at the location of the shock transition.…
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) around super massive black holes (SMBHs) are a potential laboratory to study super-Eddington accretion disks and sometimes result in powerful jets or outflows which may shine in the radio and sub millimeter bands. In this work, we model the thermal synchrotron emission of jets from general relativistic radiation magneto-hydrodynamics (GRRMHD) simulations of a BH accretion disk/jet system which assumes the TDE resulted in a magnetized accretion disk around a BH accreting at $\sim 12-25$ times the Eddington accretion rate. Through synthetic observations with the Ne…
The nearby accreting neutron star binary Sco X-1 is the closest example of ongoing relativistic jet production at high Eddington ratios. Previous radio studies have revealed that alongside mildly relativistic, radio-emitting ejecta, there is at times a much faster transfer of energy from the region of the accretion flow along the jet. The nature of this ultrarelativistic flow remains unclear and while there is some evidence for a similar phenomenon in other systems which might contain neutron stars, it has never been observed in a confirmed black hole system. We have compared these previous ra…
Our current understanding of the curved space-time around supermassive black holes is based on actively accreting black holes, which make up only ten per cent or less of the overall population. X-ray observations of that small fraction reveal strong gravitational redshifts that indicate that many of these black holes are rapidly rotating; however, selection biases suggest that these results are not necessarily reflective of the majority of black holes in the Universe. Tidal disruption events, where a star orbiting an otherwise dormant black hole gets tidally shredded and accreted onto the blac…
Black holes with accretion rates well below the Eddington rate are expected to be surrounded by low-density, hot, geometrically thick accretion disks. This includes the two black holes being imaged at sub-horizon resolution by the Event Horizon Telescope. In these disks, the mean free path for Coulomb interactions between charged particles is large, and the accreting matter is a nearly collisionless plasma. Despite this, numerical simulations have so far modeled these accretion flows using ideal magnetohydrodynamics. Here, we present the first global, general relativistic, 3D simulations of ac…