Intermittent properties of the quasi-periodic oscillations of MAXI J1820+070 revealed by Insight-HXMT

Abstract

We investigate the dynamical properties of low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) observed from the black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1820+070 during the early part of its 2018 outburst, when the system was in a bright hard state. To do this, we used a series of observations from the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope Insight-HXMT and applied a wavelet decomposition (weighted wavelet Z-transforms) to the X-ray light curve. We find that the QPO phenomenon is intermittent within each individual observation, with some subintervals in which the oscillation is strongly detected (high root-mean-square amplitude) and others in which it is weak or absent. The average lifetime of individual QPO segments is about 5 oscillation cycles, with a 3σ tail of up to about 20 cycles. There is no substantial difference between the energy spectra during intervals with strong and weak or absent QPOs. Alternatively, we suggest that the changes in oscillation amplitude can be caused by changes in the jet speed. We discuss a possible reason for the intermittent QPO strength within the precessing-jet model previously proposed for MAXI J1820+070: we suggest that the changes in oscillation amplitude are caused by changes in the jet speed. We argue that a misaligned precessing-jet scenario is also consistent with other recent observational findings that suggest that the oscillation of the Compton reflection component is in phase with the QPOs.