{
  "id": "2212.09938",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2022-12-20T01:18:23.000Z",
  "updated": "2022-12-20T01:18:23.000Z",
  "title": "Relating Peak Optical Luminosity and Orbital Period of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in X-ray Binaries",
  "authors": [
    "Victoria A. Blackmon",
    "Thomas J. Maccarone"
  ],
  "comment": "6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to MNRAS",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.HE"
  ],
  "abstract": "We compare the peak optical luminosity with the orbital period for a sample of 22 stellar-mass black hole candidates with good measurements of both quantities. We find that the peak absolute magnitude for the outbursts follows a linear relation with $M_{V,peak}=3.48 (\\pm 0.85)-3.89 (\\pm 0.91) {\\rm log}P_{orb}$, which corresponds to a $L_V \\propto P_{orb}^{1.56\\pm 0.36}$ power law relation. Excluding V4641 Sgr which is a strong outlier and not likely to have outbursts produced by the standard disc instability model, in addition to BW Cir and V821 Ara -- both of which have highly uncertain distances; the new correlation for the 19 sources is found to be $M_{V,peak}= 3.01\\;(\\pm 0.93)-3.21\\;(\\pm 1.04){\\rm log}P_{orb}$, which corresponds to $L_V \\propto P_{orb}^{1.28 \\pm 0.42}$. This is an analogous relationship to the \"Warner relation\" between orbital period and peak luminosity found for cataclysmic variables. We discuss the implications of these results for finding black hole X-ray binaries in other galaxies and in our own Galaxy with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and other future large time domain surveys.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2022-12-20T01:18:23.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "stellar-mass black hole",
      "relating peak optical luminosity",
      "orbital period",
      "black hole x-ray binaries",
      "standard disc instability model"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 6,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}