Bibcode
Hynes, R. I.; Robinson, E. L.; Terndrup, D. M.; Gandhi, P.; Froning, C. S.; Wagner, R. M.; Starrfield, S.; Dhillon, V. S.; Marsh, T. R.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 487, Issue 1, p.60-78
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7
2019
Citations
11
Refereed citations
10
Description
We present a serendipitous multiwavelength campaign of optical
photometry simultaneous with Integral X-ray monitoring of the 2015
outburst of the black hole V404 Cyg. Large-amplitude optical variability
is generally correlated with X-rays, with lags of order a minute or less
compatible with binary light travel time-scales or jet ejections. Rapid
optical flaring on time-scales of seconds or less is incompatible with
binary light-travel time-scales and has instead been associated with
synchrotron emission from a jet. Both this rapid jet response and the
lagged and smeared one can be present simultaneously. The optical
brightness is not uniquely determined by the X-ray brightness, but the
X-ray/optical relationship is bounded by a lower envelope such that at
any given optical brightness there is a maximum X-ray brightness seen.
This lower envelope traces out a F_opt ∝ F_X^{0.54} relation that
can be approximately extrapolated back to quiescence. Rapid optical
variability is only seen near this envelope, and these periods
correspond to the hardest hard X-ray colours. This correlation between
hard X-ray colour and optical variability (and anticorrelation with
optical brightness) is a novel finding of this campaign, and apparently
a facet of the outburst behaviour in V404 Cyg. It is likely that these
correlations are driven by changes in the central accretion rate and
geometry.
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