Black Hole Event Horizons and X-ray Nova Luminosities - Update

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
Number of authors
4
IAC number of authors
0
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.