Pre-low-mass X-ray binaries containing a black hole: investigating a detection mechanism

• Authors: James Bleach
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This work investigates the feasibility of detecting close, detached, black hole-red dwarf binaries, which are expected to be evolutionary precursors of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). Although this pre-low-mass X-ray binary (pre-LMXB) phase of evolution is predicted theoretically, as yet no such systems have been identified observationally. The calculations presented here suggest that the X-ray luminosity of black hole wind accretion in a pre-LMXB system could exceed the intrinsic X-ray luminosity of the red dwarf secondary star, thereby providing a detection mechanism. However, there is significant uncertainty regarding the efficiency of the conversion of gravitational potential energy to X-ray luminosity resulting from accretion onto a black hole, for example energy may be lost via advection across the event horizon. Still, sources with X-ray luminosities greater than that expected for a red dwarf star, but whose positions coincide with that of a red dwarf would represent candidate pre-LMXB systems. These candidates should be surveyed for the radial velocity shifts that would occur as a result of the orbital motion of a red dwarf star within a close binary system containing a black hole.

Keywords

EN

X-ray binaries; black holes; accretion

Discipline

• 97.80.Jp: X-ray binaries(see also 98.70.Qy X-ray sources and 97.60.Gb Pulsars)
• 97.60.Lf: Black holes(see also 04.70.-s Physics of black holes in—General relativity and gravitation; for galactic black holes, see 98.35.Jk and 98.62.Js)
• 97.10.Gz: Accretion and accretion disks

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Open Physics
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-10

Dates

published

1 - 3 - 2007

online

24 - 10 - 2006

Contributors

author

James Bleach

• Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s11534-006-0035-9