We have investigated the short term linear relation between the rms
variability and the flux in 1,961 observations of 9 black hole X-ray binaries.
The rms-flux relation for the 1-10 Hz range is ubiquitously observed in any
observation with good variability signal to noise (> 3 % 1-10 Hz fractional
rms). This concurs with results from a previous study of Cygnus X-1 (Gleissner
et. al. 2004), and extends detection of the rms-flux relation to a wider range
of states. We find a strong dependence of the flux intercept of the rms-flux
relation on source state; as the source transitions from the hard state into
the hard intermediate state the intercept becomes strongly positive. We find
little evidence for flux dependence of the broad-band noise within the PSD
shape, excepting a small subset of observations from one object in an anomalous
soft-state. We speculate that the ubiquitous linear rms-flux relation in the
broad band noise of this sample, representing a range of different states and
objects, indicates that its formation mechanism is an essential property of the
luminous accretion flow around black holes.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA