Evidence for a dynamic corona in the short-term time lags of black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1820+070

Bollemeijer;Niek Uttley;Phil Basak;Arkadip Ingram;Adam van den Eijnden;Jakob Alabarta;Kevin Altamirano;Diego Arzoumanian;Zaven Buisson;Douglas J. ~K. Fabian;Andrew C. Ferrara;Elizabeth Gendreau;Keith Homan;Jeroen Kara;Erin Markwardt;Craig Remillard;Ronald A.;Sanna Andrea

Conceptualization

;Steiner;James F. Tombesi;Francesco Wang;Jingyi Wang;Yanan Zoghbi;Abderahmen

2024-01-01

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Abstract

In X-ray observations of hard state black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs), rapid variations in accretion disc and coronal power-law emission are correlated and show Fourier-frequency-dependent time lags. On short (0.1 s) time-scales, these lags are thought to be due to reverberation and therefore may depend strongly on the geometry of the corona. Low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) are variations in X-ray flux that have been suggested to arise because of geometric changes in the corona, possibly due to general relativistic Lense-Thirring precession. Therefore, one might expect the short-term time lags to vary on the QPO time-scale. We performed novel spectral-timing analyses on Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR observations of the BHXRB MAXI J1820+070 during the hard state of its outburst in 2018 to investigate how the short-term time lags between a disc-dominated and a coronal power-law-dominated energy band vary on different time-scales. Our method can distinguish between variability due to the QPO and broad-band noise, and we find a linear correlation between the power-law flux and lag amplitude that is strongest at the QPO frequency. We also introduce a new method to resolve the QPO signal and determine the QPO phase dependence of the flux and lag variations, finding that both are very similar. Our results are consistent with a geometric origin of QPOs, but also provide evidence for a dynamic corona with a geometry varying in a similar way over a broad range of time-scales, not just the QPO time-scale.