A global study of Type B quasi-periodic oscillation in black hole X-ray binaries

H. Q. Gao, Liang Zhang, Yupeng Chen, Zhen Zhang, Li Chen, Shuang-Nan Zhang, Shu Zhang, Xiang Ma, Zi-Jian Li, Qing-Cui Bu, JinLu Qu

Published 2017-01-18Version 1

We performed a global study on the timing and spectral properties of type-B quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the outbursts of black hole X-ray binaries. The sample is built based on the observations of {\it Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer}, via searching in the literature in RXTE era for all the identified type-B QPOs. To enlarge the sample, we also investigated some type-B QPOs that are reported but not yet fully identified. Regarding to the time lag and hard/soft flux ratio, we found that the sources with type-B QPOs behave in two subgroups. In one subgroup, type-B QPO shows a hard time lag that firstly decreases and then reverse into a soft time lag along with softening of the energy spectrum. In the other subgroup, type-B QPOs distribute only in a small region with hard time lag and relatively soft hardness. These findings may be understood with a diversity of the homogeneity showing up for the hot inner flow of different sources. We confirm the universality of a positive relation between the type-B QPO frequency and the hard component luminosity in different sources. We explain the results by considering that the type-B QPO photons are produced in the inner accretion flow around the central black hole, under a local Eddington limit. Using this relationship, we derived an mass estimation of $9.3-27.1$ $\rm{M_{\odot}}$ for the black hole in H 1743-322.