A jet model for Galactic black-hole X-ray sources: The correlation between cutoff energy and phase lag

Context. Galactic black-hole X-ray binaries emit a compact, optically thick, mildy relativistic radio jet when they are in the hard and hard-intermediate states, that is, typically at the beginning and the end of an X-ray outburst. In a series of papers, we have developed a jet model and have shown through Monte Carlo simulations that our model can explain many observational results.
Aims: In this work, we investigate one more constraining relationship between the cutoff energy and the phase lag during the early stages of an X-ray outburst of the black-hole X-ray binary GX 339-4: the cutoff energy decreases while the phase lag increases during the brightening of the hard state.
Methods: We performed Monte Carlo simulations of the Compton upscattering of soft accretion-disk photons in the jet and computed the phase lag between soft and hard photons and the cutoff energy of the resulting high-energy power law.
Results: We demonstrate that our jet model naturally explains the above correlation, with a minor modification consisting of introducing an acceleration zone at the base of the jet.
Conclusions: The observed correlation between the cutoff energy and the phase lag in the black-hole binary GX 339-4 suggests that the lags are produced by the hard component. Here we show that this correlation arises naturally if Comptonization in the jet produces these two quantities.