Energy dependence of a low frequency QPO in GRS 1915+105

¹ DSM/DAPNIA/Service d'Astrophysique (CNRS URA 2052), CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
² Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio/CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina
³ Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Yoshinodai 3-1-1, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 229-8510, Japan
⁴ RIKEN The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, Hirosawa 2-1, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan

Corresponding author: J. Rodriguez, rodrigue@discovery.saclay.cea.fr

Received: 26 October 2001
Accepted: 5 February 2002

Abstract

We analyze a set of three RXTE Target of Opportunity observations of the Galactic microquasar GRS 1915+105, observed on April 2000, during a multi-wavelength campaign. During the three observations, a strong, variable low frequency ( Hz) quasi periodic oscillation (hereafter QPO), often referred to as the ubiquitous QPO, is detected together with its first harmonic. We study the spectral properties of both features, and show that: 1) their frequency variations are better correlated with the soft X-ray flux ( keV), favoring thus the location of the QPO in the accretion disk; 2) the QPO affects more the hard X-rays, usually taken as the signature of an inverse Compton scattering of the soft photons in a corona; 3) the fundamental and its harmonic do not behave in the same manner: the fundamental sees its power increase with the energy up to 40 keV, whereas the harmonic increases up to ~10 keV. The results presented here could find an explanation in the context of the Accretion-Ejection Instability, which could appear as a rotating spiral or hot point located in the disk, between its innermost edge and the co-rotation radius. The presence of the harmonic could then be a signature of the non-linear behavior of the instability. The high-energy (>40 keV) decrease of the fundamental would favor an interpretation where most or all of the quasi-periodic modulation at high energies comes not from the comptonized corona as usually assumed, but from a hot point in the optically thick disk.