Impact of Disk-Dominated Spectra on Radiation-Pressure Confinement

Determine whether the disk-blackbody-dominated spectral energy distributions of X-ray binaries significantly affect predictions of radiation-pressure confinement in compressed wind slabs.

Background

The paper interprets the observed negative slope of the absorption measure distribution as evidence for a localized density inversion, possibly produced by radiation-pressure compression in a small-scale slab. Previous radiation-pressure-compression calculations considered ionizing sources dominated by power-law spectra and produced relatively flat absorption measure distributions. Because X-ray binaries are instead dominated by disk-blackbody emission, the applicability of those calculations to the observed outflows remains unresolved.

References

However, they tested only an ionizing source that is dominated by a power-law. For X-ray binaries in general, and especially as seen in this work by following the changes over different outbursts of \, the main component of the SED is the disk black body. Therefore, we can not rule out a impact on the model of radiation pressure confinement for this scenario.

— Stratified Wind Geometries of GRS 1915+105: Density Profiles and Radii  (2609.08731 - Keshet et al., 8 Sep 2026) in Discussion, paragraph beginning “Looking into the physical mechanism”