Relativistic reflection and reverberation in GX 339-4 with NICER and NuSTAR

Jingyi Wang, Erin Kara, James Steiner, Javier García, Jeroen Homan, Joseph Neilsen, Grégoire Marcel, Renee Ludlam, Francesco Tombesi, Edward Cackett, Ron Remillard

Published 2019-10-02Version 1

We analyze seven NICER and NuSTAR epochs of the black hole X-ray binary GX 339-4 in the low-hard state during its two most recent hard-only outbursts in 2017 and 2019. These observations cover the $0.1-300$ keV unabsorbed luminosities from $0.9\%-5.7\%$ of the Eddington limit. With NICER's negligible pile-up, high count rate and unprecedented time resolution, we can perform simultaneous spectral modeling and timing analysis on the same observations. Implementing a standard reflection model including thermal disk, continuum emission, and both relativistic and distant reflections using the relxillCp and xillverCp flavor, we perform a simultaneous fit for all observations. During the rise in 2017, we see clear evidence that as the inner radius of the accretion disk moves inwards ($>49$ to $<2R_g$), the unscattered flux contribution from the thermal disk component increases along with the disk temperature, the disk becomes more ionized, and the reflection fraction also increases. We see a hint of hysteresis effect at $\sim0.8\%$ of Eddington: while mild truncation ($\sim5R_g$) is found in the decay, the inner radius is significantly more truncated in the rise ($>49R_{g}$). In our 4 epochs reaching $L>4\%L_{\rm Edd}$, the truncation level is small with $R_{\rm in}\le10R_g$. At higher frequencies ($2-7$ Hz) in the highest luminosity epoch, a soft lag is present, whose energy dependence reveals a thermal reverberation lag, with an amplitude similar to previous finding for this source. We also discuss the plausibility of the hysteresis effect and the controversy of disk truncation from spectral and timing analysis.