A MODEL FOR THE CORRELATION OF HARD X-RAY INDEX WITH EDDINGTON RATIO IN BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES

摘要

Observations show that there is a positive correlation between the Eddington ratio λ and hard X-ray index Γ for λ 0.01, and there is an anti-correlation between λ and Γ for λ 0.01 in black hole X-ray binaries (with λ = L bol/L Edd). In this work, we theoretically investigate the correlation between Γ and λ within the framework of a disk-corona model. We improve the model by taking into account all cooling processes, including synchrotron and self-Compton radiations in the corona, Comptonization of the soft photons from the underlying accretion disk, and the bremsstrahlung radiations. Presuming that the coronal flow above the disk can reach up to the 0.1 Eddington rate at the outer region, we calculate the structure of the two-phase accretion flows and the emergent spectra for accretion rates from 0.003 to 0.1. We find that at accretion rates larger than 0.01 Eddington rate, a fraction of coronal gas condenses into the disk and an inner disk can be sustained by condensation. In this case, the X-ray emission is dominated by the scattering of the soft photon from the underlying disk in the corona. The emission from the inner disk and corona can produce the positive correlation between λ and Γ. While at accretion rates lower than 0.01 Eddington accretion rate, the inner disk vanishes completely by evaporation, and the accretion is dominated by advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs), in which the X-ray emission is produced by the Comptonization of the synchrotron and bremsstrahlung photons of ADAF itself. The emission from ADAFs can produce the anti-correlation between λ and Γ. We show that our model can roughly explain the observed evolution of Γ3-25 keV with L 0.5-25 keV/L Edd for the black hole X-ray transient H1743–322 in the decay of 2003 from the thermal-dominated state to low/hard state.