AstroSat view of IGR J17091–3624 and GRS 1915+105: decoding the ‘pulse’ in the ‘Heartbeat State’
Abstract IGR J17091–3624 is a transient galactic black hole which has a distinct quasi-periodic variability known as ‘heartbeat’, similar to the one observed in GRS 1915+105. In this paper, we report the results of ∼125 ks AstroSat observations of this source during the 2016 outburst. For the first time a double peaked QPO (DPQ) is detected in a few time segments of this source with a difference of δf ∼ 12 mHz between the two peaks. The nature of the DPQ was studied based on hardness ratios and using the static as well as the dynamic power spectrum. Additionally, a low frequency (25–48 mHz) ‘heartbeat’ single peak QPO (SPQ) was observed at different intervals of time along with harmonics (50 − 95 mHz). Broadband spectra in the range 0.7 − 23 keV, obtained with SXT and LAXPC, could be fitted well with combination of a thermal Comptonisation and a multicolour disc component model. During AstroSat observation, the source was in the Soft-Intermediate State (SIMS) as observed with Swift/XRT. We present a comparative study of the ‘heartbeat’ state variability in IGR J17091–3624 with GRS 1915+105. Significant difference in the timing properties is observed although spectral parameters (Γ ∼ 2.1 − 2.4 and Tmax ∼ 0.6 − 0.8 keV) in the broad energy band remain similar. Spectral properties of segments exhibiting SPQ and DPQ are further studied using simple phase resolved spectroscopy which does not show a significant difference. Based on the model parameters, we obtain the maximum ratio of mass accretion rate in GRS 1915+105 to that in IGR J17091–3624 as ∼25 : 1. We discuss the implications of our findings and comment on the physical origin of these exotic variabilities.