Bibcode
Garcia, M. R.; McClintock, J. E.; Narayan, R.; Callanan, P. J.
Bibliographical reference
Wild Stars In The Old West: Proceedings of the 13th North American Workshop on Cataclysmic Variables and Related Objects. ASP Conference Series, Vol. 137, 1998, ed. S. Howell, E. Kuulkers, and C. Woodward (1998), p.506
Advertised on:
0
1998
Citations
26
Refereed citations
23
Description
Recently, Narayan, Garcia and McClintock showed that there is a
difference in the quiescent luminosities of black hole and neutron star
x-ray nova: when the quiescent, Eddington scaled luminosities are
compared, every black hole x-ray nova (BHXN) is fainter than every the
neutron star x-ray nova (NSXN). To this earlier work we add three more
BHXN, GRO J1655-40, GRO J0422+32, and 4U1543-47. This increases the
significance of the difference between the quiescent luminosities to the
>99% level. Given the reasonable assumption that the (Eddington
scaled) mass transfer swings in BHXN and NSXN are similar, this
difference provides direct evidence for the existence of event horizons
in the BHXN: they have larger luminosity swings because the quiescent
mass transfer energy is being hidden behind the event horizon.