Issue |
A&A
Volume 690, October 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A256 | |
Number of page(s) | 18 | |
Section | Stellar structure and evolution | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450940 | |
Published online | 15 October 2024 |
Whispering in the dark
Faint X-ray emission from black holes with OB star companions
1
Institute of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Grudziadzka 5, 87-100 Torun, Poland
2
Departamento de Física, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Av. Victor Jara, 3659 Santiago, Chile
3
Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Astrophysics and Space Exploration (CIRAS), USACH, Santiago, Chile
4
Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany
5
Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
6
Institut für Physik, Otto-von-Guericke Universität, Universitätsplatz 2, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany
7
Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Universität Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24/25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
Received:
31
May
2024
Accepted:
27
July
2024
Context. Recently, astrometric and spectroscopic surveys of OB stars revealed a few stellar-mass black holes (BHs) with orbital periods of as low as 10 days. Contrary to wind-fed BH high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs), no X-ray counterpart was detected, probably because of the absence of a radiatively efficient accretion disc around the BH. Nevertheless, dissipative processes in the hot, dilute, and strongly magnetised plasma around the BH (so-called BH corona) can still lead to non-thermal X-ray emission (e.g. synchrotron).
Aims. We determine the X-ray luminosity distribution from BH+OB star binaries up to orbital periods of a few thousand days.
Methods. We used detailed binary evolution models computed with MESA for initial primary masses of 10–90 M⊙ and orbital periods of 1–3000 d. We computed the X-ray luminosity for a broad range of radiative efficiencies that depend on the mass accretion rate and flow geometry.
Results. For typical conditions around stellar-mass BHs, we show that particle acceleration through magnetic reconnection can heat the BH corona. A substantial fraction of the gravitational potential energy from the accreted plasma is converted into non-thermal X-ray emission. Our population synthesis analysis predicts that at least 28 (up to 72) BH+OB star binaries in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) produce X-ray luminosities of above 1031 erg s−1, which are observable with focused Chandra observations. We identify a population of SB1 systems in the LMC and HD96670 in the Milky Way comprising O stars with unseen companions of masses of above 2.3 M⊙, which aligns well with our predictions and may be interesting sources for follow-up observations. The predicted luminosities of the OB companions to these X-ray-emitting BHs are 104.5 − 5.5 L⊙.
Conclusions. These findings advocate for prolonged X-ray observations of the stellar-mass black hole candidates identified in the vicinity of OB stars. Such long exposures could reveal the underlying population of X-ray-faint BHs and provide constraints for the evolution from single to double degenerate binaries and identify the progenitors of gravitational wave mergers.
Key words: stars: black holes / stars: evolution / stars: massive / X-rays: binaries
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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