No Need for an Extreme Jet Energy in the Black Hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1348-630

We model interaction with the surrounding medium of the main discrete jet ejection in the accreting black hole binary MAXI J1348-630. The kinetic energy in the ejection of that jet was estimated before to be >10⁴⁶ erg. That energy requires that the jet power was about 2 orders of magnitude above the limit corresponding to a magnetically arrested accretion onto a maximally rotating black hole. That large estimate was obtained by considering the initial ballistic jet propagation in a surrounding cavity followed by a sudden deceleration in interstellar medium under the assumption of its standard density of ~1 cm^-3. Such densities are likely in the surrounding of this source given its location in the Galactic plane. Here, we show that the estimate of the kinetic energy can be reduced to realistic values of ~10⁴⁴ erg by considering the presence of a transition layer with an exponential density growth separating the cavity and the interstellar medium. In that case, the jet is found to decelerate mostly in the transition layer, in regions with densities ≪1 cm^-3, which strongly reduces the energy requirement. Still, the required jet masses are large, ruling out the presence of a significant number of electron-positron pairs.