A Variable Ionized Disk Wind in the Black Hole Candidate EXO 1846–031

Abstract

After 34 yr, the black hole candidate EXO 1846–031 went into outburst again in 2019. We investigate its spectral properties in the hard intermediate and the soft states with NuSTAR and Insight-HXMT. A reflection component has been detected in the two spectral states but possibly originating from different illumination spectra: in the intermediate state, the illuminating source is attributed to a hard coronal component, which has been commonly observed in other X-ray binaries, whereas in the soft state, the reflection is probably produced by disk self-irradiation. Both cases support EXO 1846–031 as a low-inclination system of . An absorption line is clearly detected at ∼7.2 keV in the hard intermediate state, corresponding to a highly ionized disk wind ( ) with a velocity of up to 0.06 c . Meanwhile, quasi-simultaneous radio emissions have been detected before and after the X-rays, implying the coexistence of disk winds and jets in this system. If only the high-flux segment of the NuSTAR observation is considered, the observed wind appears to be magnetically driven. The absorption line disappeared in the soft state and a narrow emission line appeared at ∼6.7 keV on top of the reflection component, which may be evidence for disk winds, but data with higher spectral resolution are required to examine this.