The Chaotic Behavior of the Black Hole System GRS 1915+105

A modified nonlinear time series analysis technique, which computes the correlation dimension D₂, is used to analyze the X-ray light curves of the black hole system GRS 1915+105 in all 12 temporal classes. For four of these temporal classes, D₂ saturates to ~4-5, which indicates that the underlying dynamical mechanism is a low-dimensional chaotic system. Of the other eight classes, three show stochastic behavior, while five show deviation from randomness. The light curves for four classes that depict chaotic behavior have the smallest ratios of the expected Poisson noise to the variability (<0.05), while those for the three classes that depict stochastic behavior are the highest (>0.2). This suggests that the temporal behavior of the black hole system is governed by a low-dimensional chaotic system whose nature is detectable only when the Poisson fluctuations are much smaller than the variability.