A shared accretion instability for black holes and neutron stars
Journal article, 2023
Accretion disks around compact objects are expected to enter an unstable phase at high luminosity1. One instability may occur when the radiation pressure generated by accretion modifies the disk viscosity, resulting in the cyclic depletion and refilling of the inner disk on short timescales2. Such a scenario, however, has only been quantitatively verified for a single stellar-mass black hole3-5. Although there are hints of these cycles in a few isolated cases6-10, their apparent absence in the variable emission of most bright accreting neutron stars and black holes has been a continuing puzzle11. Here we report the presence of the same multiwavelength instability around an accreting neutron star. Moreover, we show that the variability across the electromagnetic spectrum-from radio to X-ray-of both black holes and neutron stars at high accretion rates can be explained consistently if the accretion disks are unstable, producing relativistic ejections during transitions that deplete or refill the inner disk. Such a new association allows us to identify the main physical components responsible for the fast multiwavelength variability of highly accreting compact objects.
Author
Federico M. Vincentelli
Villanova University
University of Southampton
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
University of La Laguna
Joseph Neilsen
Villanova University
Alexandra J. Tetarenko
Texas Tech University at Lubbock
Y. Cavecchi
Polytechnic University of Catalonia
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
N. Castro Segura
University of Southampton
Santiago Del Palacio
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics
J. van den Eijnden
University of Oxford
G. Vasilopoulos
Yale University
Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg
D. Altamirano
University of Southampton
M. Armas Padilla
University of La Laguna
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
C. D. Bailyn
Yale University
Tomaso Belloni
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
D. J.K. Buisson
University of Southampton
V. A. Cúneo
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
University of La Laguna
N. Degenaar
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
C. Knigge
University of Southampton
K. S. Long
Eureka Scientific
Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
F. Jiménez-Ibarra
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
University of La Laguna
J. Milburn
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
T. Muñoz Darias
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
University of La Laguna
M. Özbey Arabacı
University of Southampton
R. Remillard
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
T. Russell
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
Nature
0028-0836 (ISSN) 1476-4687 (eISSN)
Vol. 615 7950 45-49Subject Categories
Accelerator Physics and Instrumentation
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics
DOI
10.1038/s41586-022-05648-3
PubMed
36859580