Professor Rob Fender

Abstract:

We analyze five epochs of Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) data of the black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1820+070 during the bright hard-to-soft state transition in its 2018 outburst with both reflection spectroscopy and Fourier-resolved timing analysis. We confirm the previous discovery of reverberation lags in the hard state, and find that the frequency range where the (soft) reverberation lag dominates decreases with the reverberation lag amplitude increasing during the transition, suggesting an increasing X-ray emitting region, possibly due to an expanding corona. By jointly fitting the lag-energy spectra in a number of broad frequency ranges with the reverberation model reltrans, we find the increase in reverberation lag is best described by an increase in the X-ray coronal height. This result, along with the finding that the corona contracts in the hard state, suggests a close relationship between spatial extent of the X-ray corona and the radio jet. We find the corona expansion (as probed by reverberation) precedes a radio flare by ∼5 days, which may suggest that the hard-to-soft transition is marked by the corona expanding vertically and launching a jet knot that propagates along the jet stream at relativistic velocities.

Abstract:

We present the results of radio observations from the eMERLIN telescope combined with X-ray data from Swift for the short-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) 200826A, located at a redshift of 0.71. The radio light curve shows evidence of a sharp rise, a peak around 4–5 d post-burst, followed by a relatively steep decline. We provide two possible interpretations based on the time at which the light curve reached its peak. (1) If the light curve peaks earlier, the peak is produced by the synchrotron self-absorption frequency moving through the radio band, resulting from the forward shock propagating into a wind medium and (2) if the light curve peaks later, the turnover in the light curve is caused by a jet break. In the former case we find a minimum equipartition energy of ∼3 × 1047 erg and bulk Lorentz factor of ∼5, while in the latter case we estimate the jet opening angle of ∼9–16°. Due to the lack of data, it is impossible to determine which is the correct interpretation, however due to its relative simplicity and consistency with other multiwavelength observations which hint at the possibility that GRB 200826A is in fact a long GRB, we prefer the scenario one over scenario two.