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Li, Ya-Ping; Yuan, Feng; Fang, Taotao; Yuan, Qiang; Wang, Q. Daniel; Chen, P. F.; Neilsen, Joseph; Zhang, Shuo; Dexter, Jason, E-mail: leeyp2009@gmail.com, E-mail: fyuan@shao.ac.cn, E-mail: yuanq@umass.edu, E-mail: wqd@astro.umass.edu2015
AbstractAbstract
[en] X-ray flares have routinely been observed from the supermassive black hole at our Galactic center, Sagittarius A (Sgr A⋆). The nature of these flares remains largely unclear, despite many theoretical models. In this paper, we study the statistical properties of the Sgr A⋆ X-ray flares by fitting the count rate (CR) distribution and the structure function of the light curve with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. With the 3-million-second Chandra observations accumulated in the Sgr A⋆ X-ray Visionary Project, we construct the theoretical light curves through Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the 2–8 keV X-ray light curve can be decomposed into a quiescent component with a constant CR of count s−1 and a flare component with a power-law fluence distribution with . The duration–fluence correlation can also be modeled as a power law with (95% confidence). These statistical properties are consistent with the theoretical prediction of the self-organized criticality system with the spatial dimension S = 3. We suggest that the X-ray flares represent plasmoid ejections driven by magnetic reconnection (similar to solar flares) in the accretion flow onto the black hole.
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Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/810/1/19; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); Since 2009, the country of publication for this journal is the UK.
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