2003/03/26 by Pablo Reig, P. Reig, N. D. Kylafis +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20030449
published as Astron.Astrophys.403:L15-L18,2003 · 4 pages 3 figures, to be published in A&A Letters
arxiv created 2003/03/26 · openalex publication_date 2003/04/29 · arxiv updated 2011/05/23 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Most, probably all, accreting binaries that are believed to contain a black-hole emit radio waves when they are in the low/hard state. Whenever this radio emission has been resolved, a jet-like structure has become apparent. We propose that Compton upscattering of low-energy photons in the jet can explain both the energy spectra and the time lags versus Fourier frequency observed in the low/hard state of black-hole systems. The soft photons originate in the inner part of the accretion disk. We have performed Monte Carlo simulations of Compton upscattering in a jet and have found that for a rather wide range of values of the parameters we can obtain power-law high-energy X-ray spectra with photon-number index in the range 1.5–2 and power-law time lags versus Fourier frequency with index ~0.7. The black-hole source Cyg X-1 in the low/hard state is well described by our model.