# Multiwavelength Observations of GX 339–4 in 1996. II. Rapid X-ray Variability

## 1 Introduction

Most Galactic black hole candidates exhibit at least two distinct spectral states (see Liang & Narayan 1997, Liang 1998, Poutanen 1998 for reviews). In the hard state (= soft X-ray low state) the spectrum from $``$ keV to a few hundred keV is a hard power law (photon index $`1.5\pm 0.5`$) with an exponential cutoff. This can be interpreted as inverse Comptonization of soft photons. In the soft state (often, but not always, accompanied by the soft X-ray high state), the spectrum above $`10`$ keV is a steep power law (photon index $`>2.2`$) with no detectable cutoff out to $``$ MeV. This multi-state behavior is seen in both persistent sources (e.g. Cygnus X-1) and transient black hole X-ray novae (e.g. GRS 1009–45). GX 339–4 is unusual in that it is a persistent source, being detected by X-ray telescopes most of the time, but it also has nova-like flaring states.

In 1996, we performed a series of multiwavelength observations of GX 339–4 when it was in a hard state (= soft X-ray low state). This paper is one of a series that describes the results of that campaign. In Paper I (Smith et al. (1999)) we discuss the radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray daily light curves and spectra obtained in 1996 July. In Paper III (Smith, Filippenko, & Leonard (1999)) we discuss our Keck spectroscopy performed on 1996 May 12 UT. In Böttcher, Liang, & Smith (1998) we use the GX 339–4 spectral data to test our detailed self-consistent accretion disk corona models. These papers expand significantly on our preliminary analyses (Smith et al. 1997a ; Smith et al. 1997b ).

In this paper we focus on the rapid X-ray variability in an observation made by the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) 1996 July 26. Ever since its discovery in 1973 (Markert et al. (1973)) it has been known that the X-ray emission from GX 339–4 is extremely variable when it is in the hard state (e.g. Samimi et al. (1979); Motch et al. (1983); Maejima et al. (1984); Motch et al. (1985)). This makes the source an ideal target for RXTE, with its unprecedented timing resolution.

In §2, we discuss the observing and data analysis details for the RXTE observation.

In §3, we describe the motivation for studying the variability in three bands, 2–5, 5–10, and 10–40 keV, based on the spectral components.

In §4, we present the light curve for our whole observation, showing that the source was extremely variable, with many bright flares. We focus on some representative sections of the light curve to show the detailed evolution.

In §5, we present sample hardness ratio plots, showing that the source is slightly softer when the flux is higher, though the effect is small.

In §6, we present sample power density spectra (PDS), showing that they are complicated and include harmonically spaced quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO). We find that it is the soft 2–5 keV band that is the most variable, which is unusual for black hole candidates.

In §7, we present sample cross correlation functions (CCF) to show that the light curve for the 10–40 keV band lags that of the 2–5 keV band by $`5`$ msec.

In §8 we give a brief discussion of some of the results.

## 2 Observation and Data Analysis

The RXTE pointed observation was made as a Target of Opportunity 1996 July 26 UT (MJD 50290). A detailed discussion of the observation and data analysis is given in Smith et al. (1999), where we show the spectrum obtained from the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) and the High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE). Only the data from the PCA are used in the timing analysis.

The PCA consists of five Xe proportional counters with a total effective area of about 6500 cm<sup>2</sup> (Jahoda et al. (1996)). It has a $`1\mathrm{°}`$ field of view, but no other bright X-ray sources were in the GX 339–4 field of view. The PCA does not make separate background measurements. Instead we used version 1.5 of the background estimator program.

Data were only used when the spacecraft was not passing through the South Atlantic Anomaly and when the source was observed at elevations $`>10\mathrm{°}`$ above the Earth’s limb and the pointing was offset $`<0.02\mathrm{°}`$ from the source. The observation was short, with good data starting 18:20:32.625 and ending 20:14:48.497 UT. Because of the above constraints, valid data were only available in four segments. The total on-source exposure time was 3424 sec (uncorrected for dead time).

We used two data sets to generate the results presented here. The Standard 1 production data has 0.125 sec resolution with the data combined over all energy channels and combined over all five Proportional Counter Units (PCU). Most of the results were generated from the GoodXenon data that have a time resolution of 0.9537 $`\mu `$sec and the full 256 energy channel range. We combined all five PCU for all of the GoodXenon results. The background contributes $`13`$% of the on-source count rate when using all the layers. We used the RXTE tasks in FTOOLS version 4.0 to extract and analyze the data.

## 3 Energy Bands

We generated the light curves and PDS using all the energy channels combined. We also did the same and generated the CCF using the 2–5, 5–10, and 10–40 keV energy bands (40 keV is chosen to be well below the energy where the background dominates at $`70`$ keV). Besides having approximately the same average count rate, these three bands were motivated by our spectroscopy using these data (Smith et al. (1999)). There we used simple power law times exponential (PLE) and Sunyaev-Titarchuk function (ST; Sunyaev & Titarchuk (1980)) fits to the RXTE data above 15 keV. We found that two extra components were required to fit the spectrum at lower energies:

(1) A soft component that peaks at $`2.5`$ keV.

(2) A broad emission centered on $`6.4`$ keV, that may be an iron line feature that has been broadened by orbital Doppler motions and/or scattering off a hot medium.

Our timing analyses using the 2–5, 5–10, and 10–40 keV bands therefore aim to highlight the behavior of the soft, iron line, and hard model components respectively.

However, it is important to note that the spectra are very hard. In the ST spectral fit examples shown in Smith et al. (1999), the hard component dominates the entire RXTE spectrum, even down to 2 keV, while in the PLE example, the hard and soft components cross at 4 keV. For the various model fits, we find that the hard component is responsible for 95–100% of the 10–40 keV flux. Thus the variability analysis on the 10–40 keV band gives a clean measurement of the variability of the hard component. The hard component is also responsible for 45–75% of the 2–5 keV flux. This means that the contribution of the soft component to the variability is significantly diluted, making it harder to discern its effect in the 2–5 keV band. The hard component is also responsible for 70–90% of the 5–10 keV flux. The iron line component only contributes $`10`$% of the 5–10 keV flux, and we are unable to isolate its effect. Instead, the 5–10 keV band, where the soft component begins to have an impact on the variability, should be considered as an intermediary between the other two bands.

## 4 Light Curves

Figure 1 shows the complete background subtracted light curves in the three bands using 0.125 sec binning. Good data are present in four main segments separated by long gaps. We will denote these as segments 1–4, in the order they were observed. Figure 2 shows selected portions of the background subtracted light curve integrated over all PCA energies using 0.125 sec binning. Figure 3 shows some intervals with the higher time resolution of 0.01 sec. We find the following results:

(1) The source was extremely variable with a complicated light curve, although the average fluxes in each band stayed roughly constant throughout the observation.

(2) Numerous bright flares with fluxes many times above the mean are evident, such as Figure 2(e) that is blown up in Figure 3(c). The bright flares last a few seconds. Their shape is relatively triangular or has an exponential rise and decay. Their time profiles are approximately symmetric, usually with slightly faster decays than rises.

(3) There are many smaller flares that last from tens to hundreds of milliseconds. We do not see any very short very bright spikes.

(4) There are a few time intervals where the flux rises steadily and then drops suddenly, for example Figures 2(b), (g), and (h). Sometimes the flux drops to a level lower than the average before the increase. As shown in Figures 3(a), (d), and (e), these drops are resolved when using higher time resolution, though the drop can still be very steep.

(5) Broader brightenings and dimmings that last $`10`$ sec are seen, such as in Figure 2(a).

(6) There are broad U-shaped dips where the flux drops below the average, such as in Figure 2(d) which is expanded in Figure 3(b).

(7) The light curves in the three energy bands are almost identical. There is a very good correspondence in the flaring behavior in the different bands, with a tendency for the flares to be slightly softer, though this is not always the case.

## 5 Hardness Ratios

Figure 4 shows the hardness ratio versus intensity plots for the three energy bands using 16 second binning. There is a weak trend, with the source being slightly softer when the flux is higher. This is consistent with the light curves, where most often the flares were slightly softer. The most significant correlation is in the 2–5 vs 10–40 keV bands, as might be expected since these bands show the cleanest separation of the soft and hard components.

The 16 second binning integrates over all the finer rapid variability. Unfortunately, when we do the hardness ratio analysis on shorter time scales, the error bars become too large to determine any trends.

We do not see any hardness ratio correlations with time during the whole run. The fact that the hardness ratios show little dependence on time or brightness indicates that the spectral shape does not change markedly. Thus the average spectrum shown in Smith et al. (1999) is a good representative shape, though it should be noted that the amplitude varies dramatically on short time scales.

## 6 Power Density Spectra

We generated the power density spectra (PDS) to look for quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO) in the source.

The original bin size of the data is 0.954 $`\mu `$sec ($`1/2^{20}`$ sec). In all the PDS shown, we have summed the data into 10.0 msec bins. The power spectra were generated for intervals of 81.92 sec and the results were then averaged. We always truncated the four segments of data to ensure that only completely filled intervals were used. The PDS frequency bins were binned logarithmically in the figures.

Given the large gaps between the segments of good data, we performed the PDS analyses on the four segments separately. This avoids spurious effects due to data gaps, and allows us to look for variations in the PDS behavior with time. Figure 1 shows that the first two segments have longer stretches of data, and thus these have the better statistics in the timing analyses.

In all cases, we have checked that the power has a white noise spectrum at high frequencies, as expected from counting statistics. In all the PDS plots shown, we have subtracted this white noise component. The plots are normalized so that their integral gives the squared rms fractional variability, i.e. the power spectrum is in units of rms<sup>2</sup>/Hz.

Figure 5 shows the PDS for the four data segments using all PCA energies. The model fit parameters are given in Table 1. Given the complicated light curve, it is not surprising that the PDS are also complicated. Several QPOs are evident, though we do not see any in the kHz region.

A common fit to the PDS shape is a broken power law: $`P(\nu )=n(\nu \nu _0),P(\nu )=n(\nu /\nu _0)^k(\nu >\nu _0)`$ where $`n`$ is the amplitude and $`\nu _0`$ the break frequency. We found that this broken power law does not fit any of our results. For the “best fits” to segments 1, 2, 3, and 4, the reduced $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 3.4, 4.0, 1.5, and 1.8 respectively. The probabilities that random sets of data points would give values of $`\chi _\nu ^2`$ as large or larger than these are $`Q=6.2\times 10^{25},1.1\times 10^{32},3.2\times 10^3`$, and $`6.5\times 10^6`$.

A pair of zero-centered Lorentzians gives a much better description of the general PDS shape. This corresponds to an exponential shot model with shots of two distinct time constants (Grove et al. (1994); Smith et al. 1997c ). The Lorentzian has distribution

$$P(\nu )=\frac{LN}{1+[2(\nu LC)/LW]^2}$$

where $`LC`$ is the centroid frequency (in Hz), $`LN`$ is the normalization at $`\nu =LC`$ (in rms<sup>2</sup>/Hz), $`LW`$ is the full width at half maximum, and the area (integral) $`I=\pi (LW)(LN)/2`$ (in rms<sup>2</sup>). For the best fits to the four segments, the reduced $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.65, 1.92, 0.88, and 0.99 respectively for 105 degrees of freedom, giving $`Q=3.1\times 10^5,4.0\times 10^8,0.81`$, and 0.52. It is apparent that the PDS are more complicated than a simple pair of zero-centered Lorentzians, though this is only significantly the case for the first two segments. A pair of zero-centered Lorentzians is an adequate fit to segments 3 and 4, where the statistics were poorer: these fits are shown in Figures 5(c) and 5(d).

For segment 1 with just two zero-centered Lorentzians, the $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.65 and $`Q=3.1\times 10^5`$. Figure 5(a) shows that apparently harmonically spaced QPO features around $`0.1`$ Hz are most noticeable in this segment. We started by adding just one Lorentzian line. Centering this at 0.35, 0.175, or 0.0875 Hz improved the fit to $`\chi _\nu ^2`$$`1.5`$, $`Q6\times 10^4`$ in each case. Thus one line is an improvement, but is inadequate on its own. Adding two harmonically spaced Lorentzian lines centered at 0.35 and 0.175 Hz improves the fit to $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.30, $`Q=0.023`$. Now adding a third QPO at 0.0875 Hz slightly improves the fit to $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.26, $`Q=0.041`$. Although a fourth QPO feature at 0.044 Hz appears to be present, we are unable to prove this significantly: the interval length of 81.92 sec prevents getting results at low frequencies, while using longer intervals results in fewer of them and the error bars increase. Allowing the centroid frequencies of the QPO peaks to vary does not improve the fits (given the reduction in the number of degrees of freedom), and so it seems likely that the lines are indeed harmonically spaced. Other possible QPO at higher frequencies are also apparent. Indeed, adding a narrow Lorentzian line at 6.1 Hz improves the fit to $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.14, $`Q=0.17`$. However, we found that it was not possible to determine a confidence region for this line, because the program instead found a smaller $`\chi _\nu ^2`$ with a very broad peaked noise feature. In Figure 5(a) we show the fit that just uses a pair of zero-centered Lorentzians plus three harmonically spaced Lorentzian QPO.

Figure 5(b) shows that segment 2 has less pronounced QPO features below 1 Hz than segment 1, but it has a much more complicated PDS in the 1–20 Hz region. For segment 2 with just two zero-centered Lorentzians, the $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.92 $`Q=4.0\times 10^8`$. Adding a Lorentzian line centered at 0.35 Hz improves the fit significantly to $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.46, $`Q=1.6\times 10^3`$. Neither allowing the centroid frequency to vary nor adding other lines below 0.3 Hz improved the fit (given the reduction in the number of degrees of freedom). This shows that the 0.35 Hz line was the most stable of the harmonic lines in segment 1. As in segment 1, adding a very broad peaked noise feature at 3.6 Hz greatly improves the fit to $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.11, $`Q=0.22`$. Figure 5(b) shows this model that uses a pair of zero-centered Lorentzians, one Lorentzian QPO, and one broad peaked noise feature.

Integrating, the fractional rms variability between 0.01 and 50 Hz is 29% for segment 1, 30% for segment 2, 26% for segment 3, and 28% for segment 4. As expected, the fractional rms variabilities are very large. The overall variability remains approximately the same throughout the whole observation, as is apparent from the similar light curves of the four segments in Figure 1. However, the detailed shape of the PDS does change with time. Using the three QPO model from segment 1 for segment 2 gives $`\chi _\nu ^2`$= 1.69, $`Q=9.7\times 10^6`$, showing this is not an acceptable fit. Furthermore, splitting segments 1 and 2 into shorter sections, there is weak evidence that the 0.0875 Hz line was narrower in the first half of segment 1 and that the broad peaked noise at 3.6 Hz was most prominent in the last quarter of segment 2. For segment 1 the fractional rms amplitude is 19% for the 0.35 Hz QPO, and 6% for the other two QPO. For segment 2, the fractional rms amplitude is 22% for the 0.35 Hz QPO, and 9% for the 3.6 Hz peaked noise.

As for the light curves, we generated the PDS using the 2–5, 5–10, and 10–40 keV bands. We again summed the data into 10.0 msec bins and generated the PDS for intervals of 81.92 sec that were then averaged. Given the lower count rates in the three bands, larger logarithmic frequency bins have been used than in Figure 5. Figure 6 shows the results for segment 1. We find that the model fit used in Figure 5(a) (where all the PCA energies were combined) also gives good fits to the individual bands, provided the whole model is multiplied by a constant: this constant is 1.4 for the 2–5 keV band, 1.2 for the 5–10 keV band, and 2/3 for the 10–40 keV band. The fit results are given in Table 2. We get the same results for segments 2, 3, and 4: multiplying the corresponding model in Figures 5(b), 5(c), and 5(d) by 1.4, 1.2, and 2/3 gives good fits to the observed PDS in the 2–5, 5–10, and 10–40 keV bands respectively. Integrating, the fractional rms variability between 0.01 and 50 Hz is 35% for 2–5 keV, 32% for 5–10 keV, and 24% for 10–40 keV. This means that the variability is greatest in the 2–5 keV band and smallest in the 10–40 keV band: it is very unusual for the soft band to be the most variable one in galactic black hole sources. This result is even more striking bearing in mind that the hard component gives a large if not the dominant contribution to the 2–5 keV band, strongly diluting the effect of the soft component. The energy dependence of the PDS agrees with the light curves, where it was apparent that the bright flares are most often softer. The fact that the PDS shapes are consistent with being the same for the three bands also agrees with the light curves, where there was a good tracking between the three bands. This shows that there is no obvious energy dependence at different frequencies.

## 7 Correlation Functions

We generated the auto correlation functions (ACF) for the four segments using all the PCA energy channels. The ACF are complex, and are not amenable to simple fitting. A single exponential gives a very poor fit, even using a small range of time delays for the fitting. The characteristic decay time scale (coherence time) is $`0.4`$ sec for all four segments. Since the PDS contain the same information in a more useful form, we do not discuss the ACF results further.

A detailed frequency dependent phase lag analysis and interpretation using Compton scattering models is underway and will be presented elsewhere. In this paper we simply present the cross correlation functions (CCF) of the light curves in the 2–5, 5–10, and 10–40 keV bands.

As before, we generated the CCF for the four segments separately. Figure 7 shows sample CCF for segment 1. We have removed Poisson noise from the figures. The results are shown for the 2–5 keV band compared to the 10–40 keV band. We use three different bin times, 0.1, 0.01, and 0.0025 sec to investigate delays on different time scales. Positive time delays imply that the 10–40 keV light curve lags the 2–5 keV one.

The figure shows that for the longer time delays the CCF is relatively symmetric. This is not surprising, since there was no dramatic hardening or softening during our run. There is a broad bump at $`\pm 2`$ sec that is also seen in the ACF. For shorter time delays the CCF is not symmetric, and there is a small offset from 0. The 10–40 keV light curve lags that of the 2–5 keV band by $`5`$ milliseconds. We get similar CCF using the 2–5 and 5–10 keV bands, although they are more symmetric and there is no significant offset from 0. We also get similar CCF using the 5–10 and 10–40 keV, but with an offset of $`2.5`$ ms (the 10–40 keV light curve lags that of the 5–10 keV band). As we noted in §3, the 5–10 keV band should be considered as an intermediary between the other two bands, where the soft model component begins to have an impact on the variability, so getting an offset that is in between the other two cases was expected.

We find essentially the same results for the CCF generated from the other three segments, in particular in the values of the offsets. This gives us confidence that there is a real delay between the hard and soft photons. However, we caution that the error bars are relatively large because the number of counts is relatively low when we are trying to extract the time delays on such short time scales.

## 8 Discussion

Our RXTE observation showed that GX 339–4 was extremely variable on 1996 July 26. The flaring light curve and the shape of the PDS and the QPO are quite similar to previous Ginga observations (Figure 1 of Miyamoto et al. (1992) and Figure 3.5 of Tanaka & Lewin (1995)). This indicates that the results presented here are probably fairly typical of the source in the low (hard) state. However, we caution that we only have a small stretch of data, and our results need to be compared and contrasted with those from other RXTE observations.

In shot models, it is often assumed that the shots have a sharp rise and an exponential decay or vice versa (e.g. Belloni et al. (1997)), although the PDS predicted by the shot models are generally insensitive to the true shape of the flare. A sharp rise or fall is not seen in most of our flares, that instead are relatively symmetric. The shots in GX 339–4 therefore appear to be similar to those in Cygnus X-1 (Negoro, Miyamoto, & Kitamoto (1994)). We do see a few places in the light curve where the flux slowly rises and then has a rapid decay, sometimes to a level lower than the average flux. This may indicate that a denser ring of material fell onto the compact object, partially emptying the accretion disk.

We found that a broken power law does not fit any of our PDS. Instead a pair of zero-centered Lorentzians gives a good general description of their shape. The PDS for EXOSAT observations of GX 339–4 were fit by a single zero-centered Lorentzian by Méndez & Van der Klis (1997). Their Figure 3 plotted the fractional rms at the break frequency versus the break frequency for many black hole candidates. While it is not straightforward to add our results to this plot because our PDS have a very complex shape, roughly the break frequency is at 0.2 Hz and the fractional rms at the break frequency is $`33`$%. This is consistent with the other observations in the upper branch of their figure that come from the low state observations of the sources.

We found several QPOs in our observation. The ones around 0.1 Hz are harmonically spaced in the first segment of data. The QPO at 0.35 Hz is also present in the second segment of data. QPOs have been seen in several previous observations of GX 339–4, both in the low and very high states. These results are summarized in Table 6.2 of Van der Klis (1995). We also found evidence for QPO in ASCA observations of this source (Dobrinskaya et al. (1997)). Harmonically spaced QPOs similar to ours were seen at 0.05 and 0.1 Hz in the X-ray low state by Motch et al. (1983). Harmonically spaced QPOs were also seen by Miyamoto et al. (1991) and Belloni et al. (1997), though these are in the very high state, and the QPO were at higher frequencies than those found here. It may be interesting to note that a couple of months prior to our RXTE observation (in 1996 April) a long-lived 0.064 Hz QPO was seen in the optical emission from GX 339–4 (Steiman-Cameron et al. (1997)).

While the overall rms variability of the source was close to being constant throughout the observation ($`29`$% integrating between 0.01 and 50 Hz for all PCA energies), there is a small but significant change in the PDS shape with time. Our light curves show that the $`0.1`$ Hz QPO in segment 1 may be related to the broad $`10`$ sec brightenings and dimmings (e.g. Figure 2(a)); this effect was less evident in the later segments. The apparent structure in the PDS above 1 Hz presumably comes from the contributions of the individual shorter flares. However, the overlap of many flares results in a complicated PDS.

We found that the shape of the PDS has no obvious energy dependence. However, the amplitude does, with the soft 2–5 keV band having the greatest variability. This is a very surprising result. Previous observations of GX 339–4 in the low state by Motch et al. (1983) and Maejima et al. (1984) found that the PDS are usually insensitive to the energy band studied. Normally when galactic black hole candidates do have differences, it is the hard band that is the more variable one (Van der Klis (1995)). Thus this needs to be further investigated through more observations of this source.

The fact that the light curves in the different energy bands track closely suggests that the emission mechanisms responsible for the soft and hard components are not independent. This is consistent with Compton reprocessing models. However, the fact that the soft band is the most variable one in our observation indicates that the region responsible for the hard component does not fully cover the region responsible for the soft component.

We found that the 10–40 keV light curve lags that of the 2–5 keV band by $`5`$ ms. This is consistent with the hard component being due to Compton scattering of the soft component. The 5 msec delay implies a typical path length difference of 1500 km for the hard and soft photons. The delay of the hard X-rays in GX 339–4 resembles the results found for Cygnus X-1 in the low state (Miyamoto et al. (1988)).

Our CCF results investigate the time delays on shorter time scales than in most of the previous studies of GX 339–4 in the low state. Our results are therefore consistent with those of Maejima et al. (1984), who saw no time delays in their CCFs that only had 187.5 ms time resolution. Similarly, Motch et al. (1983) found that the CCF of different energy channels were synchronized to better than 80 ms. Miyamoto et al. (1992) used Ginga observations to show that the 4.6–9.2 keV band lagged the 1.2–4.6 keV band on a $`10`$ ms time scale. While they suggested the phase lag had a frequency dependence, their results appear to be equally consistent with no frequency dependence. Their 1.2–4.6 keV band samples the soft component slightly better than our 2–5 keV band, that contains a large contribution from the hard component. This may explain why the shape of our PDS and light curves show no significant difference between the three bands. Miyamoto et al. (1991) also found time delays when GX 339–4 was in a very high state: the time variations in the 2.3 – 4.6 keV band were the most advanced.

We thank the referee for carefully reading the manuscript and providing useful suggestions and clarifications. This work was supported by NASA grants NAG 5-1547 and 5-3824 at Rice University.