The December 2015 re-brightening of V404 Cygni

Abstract

In December 2015 the black hole binary V404 Cyg underwent a secondary outburst after the main June 2015 event. We monitored this re-brightening with the INTEGRAL and Swift satellites, and in this paper we report the results of the time-resolved spectral analysis of these data. The December outburst shared several characteristics with the June event. The well-sampled INTEGRAL light curve shows up to ten Crab flares, which are separated by relatively weak non-flaring emission phases when compared to the June outburst. The spectra are nicely described by absorbed Comptonization models, with hard photon indices, Γ ≲ 2, and significant detections of a high-energy cut-off only during the bright flares. This is in contrast to the June outburst, where the Comptonization models gave electron temperatures mostly in the 30–50 keV range, while some spectra were soft (Γ ~ 2.5) without signs of any spectral cut-off. Similarly to the June outburst, we see clear signs of a variable local absorber in the soft energy band covered by Swift/XRT and INTEGRAL/JEM-X, which causes rapid spectral variations observed during the flares. During one flare, both Swift and INTEGRAL captured V404 Cyg in a state where the absorber was nearly Compton thick, N H ≈ 1024 cm−2, and the broad-band spectrum was similar to obscured AGN spectra, as seen during the X-ray plateaus in the June outburst. We conclude that the spectral behaviour of V404 Cyg during the December outburst was analogous with the first few days of the June outburst, both having hard X-ray flares that were intermittently influenced by obscuration due to nearly Compton-thick outflows launched from the accretion disc.