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Magnetic origin of black hole winds across the mass scale

Nature Astronomy volume 1, Article number: 0062 (2017) Cite this article

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Abstract

Invariably, black hole accretion disks seem to produce plasma outflows that result in blue-shifted absorption features in their spectra1. The X-ray absorption-line properties of these outflows are diverse, ranging in velocity from non-relativistic2 (~300 km s–1) to sub-relativistic3 (~0.1c, where c is the speed of light) and a similarly broad range in the ionization states of the wind plasma2,4. We report here that semi-analytical, self-similar magnetohydrodynamic wind models that have successfully accounted for the X-ray absorber properties of supermassive black holes5,6 also offer a good fit to the high-resolution X-ray spectrum of the accreting stellar-mass black hole GRO J1655–40. This provides an explicit theoretical argument of their magnetohydrodynamic origin (aligned with earlier observational claims)7 and supports the notion of a universal magnetic structure of the observed winds across all known black hole sizes.

The importance of the plasma outflows (winds) from black hole accretion disks lies partly in the fact that they may remove the accretion disks’ angular momentum8, a condition necessary for making accretion possible, and partly in their potential feedback and influence on their environment9. The variety of processes that can launch such winds10–16 has made their origin contentious. However, X-ray spectroscopic data and analysis7,17–19 of the wind associated with the X-ray binary (XRB) GRO J1655–40 have argued in favour of a magnetic origin, but only by excluding the other candidate processes. Here, we present first-principles computations of absorption-line spectra of self-similar magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models for the accretion disk wind5,6 that reproduce both the combined global ionization properties and the detailed kinematic structure of the absorption features of GRO J1655–40. Most importantly, these wind models are the same as those that have accounted successfully for the X-ray absorber systematics of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) as diverse as Seyfert galaxies5,20 and broad-absorption-line (BAL) quasars6, modified only by the different ionizing spectrum of GRO J1655–40 and scaled to its black hole mass. This demonstrates a universality of properties for accretion disk winds across the entire mass range (10M⊙–109M⊙, where M⊙ is solar mass) for black holes21.

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Figure 1: Schematic of MHD accretion disk wind.
Figure 2: Radial wind profiles inferred from our best-fit model of α = 0.2.
Figure 3: The 46-ks Chandra/HETG spectrum of GRO J1655–40 overlaid on the global MHD wind model.
Figure 4: | Modelling the Fe xxvi Ly-α doublet (1.778, 17834 Å) and the Ne x Ly-α doublet (12.132, 12.136 Å) with the MHD winds of α = 0.2 and n ˜ 17 =9.3 .

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Kallman for providing us with the Chandra/HETG data for GRO J1655–40. K.F., D.K. and C.S. acknowledge support by a NASA/ADP grant. E.B. received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programm under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 655324. and from the I-CORE program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee (grant number 1937/12). Support for this work was in part provided by NASA through Chandra Award Number AR6-17013A issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. James Madison University, 800 South Main Street, Harrisonburg, 22807, Virginia, USA.

    Keigo Fukumura

  2. NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, 20771, Maryland, USA

    Demosthenes Kazanas, Chris Shrader & Francesco Tombesi

  3. Universities Space Research Association, 10211 Wincopin Circle, Suite 500, Columbia, 21044, Maryland, USA

    Chris Shrader

  4. Physics Department, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 3200003, Israel

    Ehud Behar

  5. Astronomy Department, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    Ehud Behar & Francesco Tombesi

  6. Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita’di Roma Tor Vergata, Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, Roma, I-00133, Italy

    Francesco Tombesi

  7. Academy of Athens, Soranou Efesiou 2, Athens, GR 11527, Greece

    Ioannis Contopoulos

Authors
  1. Keigo Fukumura
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Contributions

K.F. led the overall model development and data fitting procedures. D.K., C.S, E.B. and F.T. each contributed to the validation, interpretation and presentation of the final results. The baseline wind model was originally formulated by I.C. In particular, D.K. provided insights connecting our results to the broader picture of accretion-induced outflows in astrophysical environments and E.B. provided technical advice on the details of atomic physics crucial to the X-ray spectroscopic analyses in this work. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript and preparing the figures and tables.

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Correspondence to Keigo Fukumura.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–4 and Supplementary Tables 1–2. (PDF 541 kb)

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Fukumura, K., Kazanas, D., Shrader, C. et al. Magnetic origin of black hole winds across the mass scale. Nat Astron 1, 0062 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-017-0062

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