# Hubble Space Telescope Observations of the Black Hole X-ray Transient GRO J0422+32 Near Quiescence

## 1 Introduction

The hard X-ray transient GRO J0422+32 was discovered by GRO/BATSE on 1992 Aug 5 \[Paciesas et al. 1992\] at a flux of 0.2 Crab. It rapidly rose to a level of 3 Crab, before beginning a gradual decline over subsequent months. The X-ray source was identified with a 13th magnitude optical nova \[Castro-Tirado et al. 1993\], which showed a similar decline. The later stages of the outburst were characterised by an unprecedented series of mini-outbursts. Observations in the early stages of its discovery suggested similarities to other black hole X-ray transient (BHXRT) binaries; subsequent quiescent studies (Casares et al. 1995, Filippenko et al. 1995, Orosz & Bailyn 1995) have confirmed its binary nature and suggested a compact object mass of 2.5–5.0 M, larger than any known neutron star and probably a black hole. A more recent study has suggested that the mass may actually be much greater than this \[Beekman et al. 1997\]. In some ways, GRO J0422+32 is the most extreme member of its class, and the most similar to cataclysmic variables, having the shortest orbital period (5.1-hr, Chevalier & Ilovaisky 1995) and the latest type companion star (M2V, Casares et al. 1995, Filippenko et al. 1995).

As part of an ongoing Target-of-Opportunity programme to observe BHXRTs in outburst with The Hubble Space Telescope, we triggered our proposal to observe the first of the mini-outbursts. The observations were delayed and actually took place two years after the initial outburst. The system was nonetheless still active at this point, being two magnitudes above quiescence in the V band, and we believe we caught the end of either an otherwise unreported mini-outburst, or an extended plateau or standstill.

In Sects. 2 & 3 we describe the observations we made; they are placed within the context of the long-term light curve in Sect. 4 and analysed in Sects. 5 & 6. Our conclusions are summarised in Sect. 7.

## 2 Observations

HST observed GRO J0422+32 using the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) for two visits, comprising a total of 11 spacecraft orbits, on 1994 August 25 and 26. The exposures we took are listed in Table 1. To observe the vacuum UV, we invested the majority of our time in a series of G160L exposures, interleaving these with short PRISM exposures to capture the optical spectrum. The G270H and G400H spectra provide coverage overlapping that of the PRISMs at higher spectral resolution. All the observations used the ‘4.3’ FOS aperture and COSTAR. They were obtained in RAPID mode, with a duty cycle of 77 per cent, and used standard sub-stepping, giving four pixels per diode.

## 3 Data Reduction

Our HST observations found GRO J0422+32 in the faintest post-outburst state then observed spectroscopically. A preliminary appraisal of the original pipeline-calibrated data revealed an extremely noisy spectrum, with only the 2800 Å Mg ii emission line detected in the UV spectrum. Since the De-commissioning of the FOS, a substantially revised set of calibration files has become available \[Keyes 1997\], and we therefore performed a re-reduction and calibration of our data. The pipeline reduction is also known to underestimate the background counts significantly \[Keyes et al. 1995\], necessitating manual subtraction.

### 3.1 G160L Recalibration

Our average G160L spectrum is shown in Fig. 1. This grating disperses the 1140–2508 Å spectrum to pixels 1275–2063. Zeroth order light falls on the detector at around pixels 600–670. Elsewhere in the array, the pixels monitor the background count-rate. A cursory inspection of our data revealed that the pipeline reductions had underestimated the background level by approximately a factor of two.

McClintock, Horne & Remillard (1995, hereafter MHR95) and Kinney & Bohlin (1993, hereafter KB93) disagree about the source of the extra background light. MHR95 adopted the hypothesis that it is due to cosmic rays, whereas KB93 assert that it is due to scattered light. This disagreement is significant because the shape of the extra background spectrum has an effect on the UV continuum flux attributed to the target. We believe that in our case the background is dominated by particle events, in line with the MHR95 interpretation, for the following reasons:

1. MHR95 explicitly ruled out scattered optical light in their G160L observations of A0620–00. At the time of our observations, GRO J0422+32 was two visual magnitudes fainter than the quiescent magnitude of A0620–00, thus scattered optical light from the source is surely also negligible in our case.
2. There is very little UV flux from the source so scattering of this is utterly implausible.
3. The correction needed for the PRISM/BL spectrum, which used the same detector, but a different disperser, was of comparable size to that for G160L. This suggests that the background level is a property of the detector, independent of which disperser is used and so supports a model based on particle events rather than scattered light. This is in contrast to the HST/FOS observations of the highly reddened BHXRT GRO J1655–40 \[Hynes et al. 1998\] which probably were influenced by scattered red light leading to G160L corrections significantly greater than for the other dispersers.

The one remaining possible source of background counts is scattered geocoronal light. Since we used a larger aperture than did MHR95, this cannot readily be ruled out, but argument (iii) suggests it does not dominate.

In our grand sum G160L exposure, the background level, determined from pixels 900–1199, was $`71\pm 2`$ per cent higher than the pipeline value, as shown in Fig. 1. The panels below show the rebinned spectrum obtained by subtracting the revised backgrounds: Fig. 1(b) uses the MHR95 background recipe, Fig. 1(c) uses KB93’s recipe. At the left of these figures can be seen the background subtracted count-rate for the first 546 pixels in the array. These pixels are exposed to background only, but were not used in the calculation of the background level. Therefore they provide an assessment of the accuracy of the revised background. For both recipes we see significantly lower counts in this region than from the source region at the right, (pixels 1400–2000) therefore we cautiously conclude that we have detected vacuum UV emission from GRO J0422+32 in early quiescence. The revised background subtraction shown in panel (b) gives a mean count rate per pixel in pixels 0–545 of $`(2.8\pm 0.9)\times 10^4`$ s<sup>-1</sup>, about half that in panel (c), $`(5.4\pm 0.9)\times 10^4`$ s<sup>-1</sup>. While the particle model seems to give a better estimate of the shape of the background count rate than a scattered light model, neither model gives a mean count in pixels 0–545 within $`3\sigma `$ of zero so we should view these results with considerable caution, as this may indicate a deficiency in both models.

### 3.2 PRISM Recalibration

As for G160L, for both PRISM configurations (BL and RD) we combined exposures into a grand sum before attempting to characterise the background. Both PRISM configurations give many pixels exposed to background only: we used pixels 1400–1999 for PRISM/BL and 100–899 for PRISM/RD. For the former case, the observed background count rate was higher than the background model by $`63\pm 3`$ per cent, a similar value to that found with G160L which also used the BL detector. For PRISM/RD no significant correction was needed; the background model background was $`2\pm 3`$ per cent below that observed.

For the PRISM/RD combination, there appeared to be an offset in the dispersion direction, probably due to miscentering of the target in the aperture. We detected this by comparison of the position of the Mg ii (2798 Å) line with its position in the higher resolution G270H spectrum. The offset was the same for both PRISM/RD exposures, so the miscentering was probably also the same for the G270H exposure taken between them. We were able to correct the offset by shifting both G270H and PRISM/RD spectra by 12 pixels after flat-fielding. This also brought the H$`\alpha `$ and H$`\beta `$ emission lines in the PRISM/RD spectrum to within one pixel of their rest wavelengths. Since the PRISM/BL spectrum contains no prominent emission lines (the Mg ii line is undetected), we cannot determine if there is a similar offset in this case. This makes our calibration of the PRISM/BL spectra less certain than PRISM/RD. Since the BL detector is also less sensitive than the RD, we focussed on the PRISM/RD spectrum in our model fitting.

We note that a 12 pixel error would correspond to 4 diodes or 1.22 arcsec in the mode used. Since the aperture width was 4.3 arcsec, the stellar image should still have been $`1`$ arcsec, or $`10\sigma `$, from the aperture edge and so aperture losses will not significantly affect the accuracy of the spectrophotometry. We also note that the revised calibration files \[Keyes 1997\] made a significant difference for the extreme long wavelength end of the PRISM/RD spectrum, with the flux longwards of 7500 Å being increased by 20–80 per cent. Our recalibrated G160L and PRISM/RD spectra, spanning 1300–9000 Å are shown in Fig. 2.

### 3.3 G270H and G400H Recalibration

Because of the high dispersion, the count rates are relatively low and the background is a serious problem for both G270H and G400H. The problem is exacerbated because these gratings both completely fill the diode array with the source spectrum, leaving no region to monitor the background. Comparing these spectra with those from the PRISMs, the pipeline does seem to have subtracted the background reasonably well, but we cannot attempt a precise recalibration of the high resolution spectra or quantify the uncertainty in the background level. We therefore use the G270H and G400H spectra primarily to search for and examine spectral lines.

Our combined G270H and G400H spectrum is shown in Fig. 3. For clarity it has been convolved with a Gaussian of the same width as the estimated line spread function, i.e. one diode. This corresponds to 2.05 Å for the G270H grating and 3.00 Å for the G400H. The smoothed spectrum was then rebinned to give one pixel per resolution element. The spectrum is largely featureless with only the Mg ii (2798 Å) emission line unambiguously detected.

## 4 The Photometric State of GRO J0422+32

The R band light curve of the outburst of GRO J0422+32 is shown in Fig. 4. On 1994 September 5, approximately 10 days after our observations, Zhao et al. \[Zhao et al. 1994b\] measured magnitudes of $`V=22.39\pm 0.27`$, $`R=21.06\pm 0.10`$. The system remained at this level and this is representative of its subsequent quiescent state ($`V=22.24\pm 0.14`$, $`R=20.97\pm 0.10`$, Casares et al. 1995.) We can also calculate approximate magnitudes from our PRISM/RD spectrum however, and obtain $`U=20.75\pm 0.04`$, $`B=20.84\pm 0.03`$, $`V=20.42\pm 0.04`$, $`R=20.08\pm 0.04`$, brighter by one magnitude in the R band and two magnitudes in V. This is a significant difference, and it is very unlikely that the HST calibration could be this much in error; our error estimates include statistical errors, the documented 3–4 per cent photometric accuracy of the FOS \[Keyes 1997\] and allow for a miscentering uncertainty $`\pm 1`$ pixel. We conclude that GRO J0422+32 was not completely quiescent at the time of our observations. Instead, we suggest that we saw the final stages of a last, previously undetected, mini-outburst. If this is the case, then this mini-outburst occurred approximately 240 days after the last recorded one, consistent with the recurrence time of 120 days originally suggested for the 1993–94 mini-outbursts (Augusteijn, Kuulkers & Shaham 1993, Chevalier & Ilovaisky 1995) and subsequently detected in quiescence (Iyudin & Haberl 1997a,b). An alternative interpretation is that after the last observations around day 600, when Zhao et al. \[Zhao et al. 1994a\] measured $`R=20.03\pm 0.11`$, $`V=20.67\pm 0.22`$, the system remained on a plateau, finally dropping to quiescence just after our observation. This is plausible, as both R and V band magnitudes around day 600 are similar to values we observe.

## 5 The Continuum Spectrum

### 5.1 Interstellar Reddening

Due to the low signal-to-noise ratio and uncertain background level of our G160L spectrum, we cannot reliably attempt our own reddening determination using the 2175 Å feature. Existing reddening estimates are summarised in Table 2. We adopt a compromise value of $`E(BV)=0.3\pm 0.1`$ and deredden our spectra using the galactic average extinction curve of Seaton \[Seaton 1979\]. Since the only UV determination lies at the extreme end of the spread of estimates, however, it may be that the extinction curve actually diverges from the galactic average; our dereddened UV spectrum should therefore be viewed with some caution.

### 5.2 The Companion Star Contribution

Since GRO J0422+32 was near quiescence when we observed it, the spectrum of the companion star can be expected to be a significant fraction of the total, at least at longer wavelengths. Unfortunately, the resolution of the PRISM/RD spectrum at long wavelengths is too low to detect spectral features from the companion, so we cannot perform an independent analysis of veiling to estimate how strong the contribution is. Instead we adopt results from the literature.

For the spectral type of the companion star we assume M2V as favoured by Casares et al. \[Callanan et al. 1995\] and Filippenko et al. \[Filippenko et al. 1995\] and use the spectrum of the M2V star GL49 \[Gunn & Stryker 1983\] as the template for our companion contribution. Casares et al. \[Callanan et al. 1995\] give an R band (quiescent) magnitude of $`20.96\pm 0.10`$ and estimate the fraction of the light due to the secondary to be $`52\pm 8`$ per cent in the 6700–7500 Å range. Their results are consistent with those of Filippenko et al. \[Filippenko et al. 1995\]. We therefore estimate an R band magnitude for the companion star alone of $`21.68\pm 0.11`$ and normalise the spectrum of GL49 accordingly; the resulting spectrum, reddened by $`E(BV)=0.3`$, is shown in Fig. 2. We then subtract this normalised spectrum, smoothed to the instrumental resolution of $`1\mathrm{diode}=4\mathrm{pixels}`$ \[Keyes 1997\], to obtain the spectrum of the accretion flow shown in Fig. 5.

GRO J0422+32 presents a unique opportunity to study the spectrum of the quiescent or near quiescent accretion flow in a BHXRT. Because the companion star is an M-type dwarf, rather than the more typical K, G or even F-type subgiant, it is redder than in the other systems and contaminates the optical spectrum much less. Furthermore the late type companion shows very strong molecular bands, so its spectral type and brightness can be better determined, and so the uncertainty in the contamination is smaller. The deduced spectrum of the accretion flow is therefore much less affected by uncertainties in the companion’s contribution.

### 5.3 Black Body Models

We began by trying to characterise the spectrum of the accretion flow with a black body fit. The best fitting black body spectrum (in the $`\chi ^2`$ sense) is shown by the dashed line in Fig. 5. This has $`T7600`$ K and a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ of 3.6 after masking out emission lines. It is clear that this is not a satisfactory fit and allowing for a $`\pm 0.1`$ uncertainty in $`E(BV)`$ does not resolve this. The observed spectrum is sharper peaked than a black body and tends to a power-law form at short wavelengths. Adopting a temperature distribution in a disc instead of a single temperature black body can produce a power-law at short wavelengths, but will always produce a broader spectrum than a single temperature model. In principle, a thermal spectrum from an accretion disc might be expected to deviate from a black body, but we would expect deviations in the form of edges or structure into the spectrum, in particular a Balmer jump in emission or absorption. Apart from the sharp, and uncertain, upturn below 2500 Å (Fig. 2), there is no evidence for this. We encountered similar problems in trying to fit the spectrum of GRO J1655–40 in outburst, which also seemed too sharply peaked to be fit by a black body model \[Hynes et al. 1998\]. There, however, the situation was complicated by the much larger reddening. In this case we have much less uncertainty in isolating the intrinsic spectrum of the accretion flow, and hence we can say with more confidence that it cannot be modelled by purely thermal emission.

### 5.4 Non-thermal Models

A more promising explanation for the observed spectrum is that it is non-thermal in origin: self-absorbed synchrotron emission. Such a mechanism can readily produce a spectrum with a sharper peak than a black body and, as illustrated in Fig. 5, can fit the spectrum rather well. The spectrum plotted is based on a free-fit of a synchrotron emitting slab containing a magnetic field of uniform strength and electrons with a power-law energy spectrum. This fit is intended purely to demonstrate that even a very simple synchrotron emitting model can fit the accretion spectrum well. More realistic models of self-absorbed synchrotron emission in X-ray binaries invoke thermal electron distributions, but over the limited spectral range covered, a power-law model leads to a reasonable approximation to the expected spectrum.

We suggest two more sophisticated models that could lead to such a spectrum. The first is that the accretion disc extends inwards close to the compact object but has a magnetically dominated corona above it. Such a model was considered by Di Matteo, Celotti & Fabian \[Di Matteo, Celotti & Fabian 1997\] in the context of both active galactic nuclei and galactic black hole candidates. In their model there are at any time a number of localised active coronal regions in which electrons are energised by magnetic reconnection (a possible mechanism for this is described by Haswell, Tajima & Sakai 1992) and subsequently, cool emitting cyclo-synchrotron radiation which becomes self-absorbed below some critical frequency. These models predict that for solar mass black holes, the critical frequency, and hence the peak of the spectrum, should lie in the extreme UV, i.e. at higher frequencies than we observe. We are observing GRO J0422+32 in a much lower state than was considered by Di Matteo et al. \[Di Matteo, Celotti & Fabian 1997\], however, and this could move the peak to lower energies.

An alternative set of models, which have seen much discussion recently, are the so called advective accretion flows. These have been put forward as an explanation of many properties of BHXRTs in quiescence (Narayan, McClintock & Yi 1996, Hameury et al. 1997, Narayan, Barret & McClintock 1997), and subsequently the models have been extended to consider the outburst and decline phases \[Esin, McClintock & Narayan 1997\]. The essence of these models is that the inner region of the disc becomes evaporated into a geometrically thick, optically thin region. This flow radiates less efficiently than an optically thick disc and so there is a bulk inflow of thermal energy (i.e. the flow is advective), ultimately through the event horizon. The models predict that the optical and UV accretion light should be dominated by self-absorbed synchrotron emission from this advective inner region. Since our spectrum was obtained at a very low luminosity, shortly before GRO J0422+32 reached its quiescent state, we should consider if these models agree with our observations. A detailed comparison is beyond the scope of this paper, requiring some refinement of the models, but a preliminary analysis appears promising (A. Esin, priv. comm.). Both the frequency of the predicted synchrotron peak and its luminosity are strikingly consistent with our observations. We therefore suggest it is possible that the optical continuum emission at the time of our observations was dominated by an advective flow with mass transfer rate somewhat above quiescence.

### 5.5 The Far Ultraviolet Spectrum

As discussed in Sect. 3.1, we appear to have detected source counts in the far UV from GRO J0422+32. For a range of extinctions $`E(BV)=0.20.42`$, our average flux over the range 1650–1950 Å, is in the range $`f_\lambda =(0.41.9)\times 10^{16}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> Å<sup>-1</sup>. Normalised to what would be seen at a distance of 1 kpc (assuming a distance of 2.4 kpc for GRO J0422+32, Shrader et al. 1994), $`f_\lambda =(311)\times 10^{16}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> Å<sup>-1</sup>. Uncertainties both in the shape of the background spectrum and its normalisation will increase this range and our results do not conclusively rule out zero flux in the far UV. Comparing this with the normalised far UV fluxes tabulated by MHR95 for A0620–00 and selected dwarf novae, our measurement agrees with the latter, but is ten times greater than in A0620–00. This may be because GRO J0422+32 was not completely quiescent at the time of our observation, but since our detection is marginal, the disagreement may not be significant. Our deduced far UV spectrum is strongly dependent on the exact form and level of background spectrum adopted. The data indicate a sharp upturn in the UV, however the reliability of this is far from certain (Fig. 1). If it is indeed a real upturn, it would not readily come from advective models in their current form (e.g. Esin et al. 1997). While these do predict an upturn due to Comptonisation of the synchrotron peak, this is expected to occur at shorter wavelengths and to be smoother than we seem to observe.

## 6 Emission Lines

In the optical, we detect unresolved H$`\alpha `$ and barely resolved H$`\beta `$ emission in our PRISM/RD spectrum. The only emission line detected in the ultraviolet was Mg ii (2798 Å), which was also seen to be prominent in A0620–00 (MHR95). The deduced line parameters are given in Table 3. The Mg ii line is well resolved by the G270H grating and has a FWHM in velocity space of $`2000\pm 300`$ km s<sup>-1</sup>, comparable to that observed in A0620–00. We estimate that emission is detectable to velocities of $`1500`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> (i.e. $`\mathrm{FWZI}3000`$ km s<sup>-1</sup>. This is similar to the quiescent H$`\alpha `$ and H$`\beta `$ lines observed by Orosz & Bailyn \[Orosz & Bailyn 1995\], for which we estimate FWHM 1500 km s<sup>-1</sup> and 1800 km s<sup>-1</sup> respectively, with FWZI $`3000`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> in both cases.

If we assume the system parameters of Filippenko et al. \[Filippenko et al. 1995\], then at the circularisation radius in the disc we would expect $`v_\varphi \mathrm{sin}i700`$ km s<sup>-1</sup>. The observed velocities of the Mg ii emission (and the quiescent H$`\alpha `$ emission) therefore suggest emission from a disc extending inwards to at least one quarter the circularisation radius. This is consistent with the advective accretion models discussed in Sect. 5.4, which assume evaporation of the accretion disc at a few times less than the circularisation radius \[Esin, McClintock & Narayan 1997\], but obviously this does not prove that the disc is evaporated.

## 7 Summary and Conclusions

We have presented a study of GRO J0422+32 near quiescence based on UV and optical spectroscopic observations, and suggest that these took place during the decline from a previously unreported mini-outburst. Our observations show similarities to other BHXRTs in quiescence, and in particular to A0620–00, in two respects:

1. We find that this accretion spectrum cannot be well fitted by black body models, but can be better characterised by a self-absorbed synchrotron spectrum. Two possible explanations have been advanced: either a magnetically-dominated corona above a thin disc, or an advection dominated flow. Further modelling beyond the scope of this paper will be required to discriminate between these possibilities.
2. The emission line spectrum is dominated by H$`\alpha `$, H$`\beta `$ and Mg ii (2798 Å), as is found for A0620–00 in quiescence. The Mg ii width is similar to that in A0620–00, suggesting a similar origin.

The similarity on both counts to other quiescent BHXRTs suggests a similar structure. The brightness of GRO J0422+32 at the time of our observations can be readily explained if the mass transfer rate had not completely dropped to its quiescent level.

## Acknowledgements

RIH is supported by a PPARC Research Studentship. Thanks to our referee, Tim Naylor, and the editor, Andy Fabian, for constructive criticism and advice, and to Phil Charles, Erik Kuulkers and Tariq Shahbaz for hospitality, and helpful suggestions and discussion on this work. The advice of Tony Keyes is appreciatively acknowledged, as is the generously shared expertise of the STSDAS team at STScI. We thank Ping Zhao, Paul Callanan, Mike Garcia and Jeff McClintock for obtaining photometry shortly after our observations and providing their full set of photometry for inclusion in Fig. 4. We used the NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service and support for this work was provided by NASA through grant number GO-4377-02-92A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555.