7–11 Sept 2026
Cefalù
Europe/Rome timezone

Timing and Spectral Analysis of the 2025 Outburst of 4U 1630$-$47 with NICER

Not scheduled
20m
Cefalù

Cefalù

Cefalù, province of Palermo, Sicily. Sala delle Capriate in the Town Hall (Piazza Duomo).
Poster

Speaker

haifan zhu

Description

We analyzed NICER observations of the 2025 outburst of the black hole X-ray binary 4U~1630$-$47 to investigate the spectral--timing properties of its transient low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) and mHz quasi-regular modulation (QRM). During the rising phase of the outburst, the QPO centroid frequency increased from $\sim 0.24$ Hz to $\sim 3.43$ Hz. Wavelet-based state separation shows that the with-QPO intervals are associated with a higher inner disk temperature and a lower \texttt{diskbb} normalization than the without-QPO intervals, while the photon index $\Gamma$ shows weaker changes within the uncertainties. Near the outburst peak, the source displayed a weak QRM at $\sim 0.07$ Hz with a fractional rms amplitude of $\sim 4.7\%$, lower than that of the heartbeat state observed in 2023. Phase-resolved Hilbert--Huang analysis shows that the inner disk temperature is positively correlated with the X-ray flux, whereas the diskbb normalization is anti-correlated, while $\Gamma$ varies only weakly. Overall, the short-timescale spectral--timing variability is expressed most clearly through the disk-related parameters. The transient QPOs are therefore consistent with short-timescale disk-related variability during the rising phase, whereas the mHz QRM may represent a weaker heartbeat-like variability mode appearing near the outburst peak.

Author

Co-author

Prof. Mariano Mendez (Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen)

Presentation materials