Correlated Temporal and Spectral Variability

Abstract

The variability of neutron star and black hole X-ray sources has several dimensions, because of the roles played by different important time-scales. The variations on time scales of hours, weeks, and months, ranging from 50% to orders of magnitude, arise out of changes in the flow in the disk. The most important driving forces for those changes are probably various possible instabilities in the disk, though there may be effects with other dominant causes. The changes in the rate of flow appear to be associated with changes in the flow's configuration, as the accreting material approaches the compact object, for there are generally correlated changes in both the Xray spectra and the character of the faster temporal variability. There has been a lot of progress in tracking these correlations, both for Z and Atoll neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries, and for black hole binaries. I will discuss these correlations and review briefly what they tell us about the physical states of the systems