Black hole transients during bright outbursts show distinct changes of their
spectral and variability properties as they evolve during an outburst, that are
interpreted as evidence for changes in the accretion flow and X-ray emitting
regions. We obtained an anticipated XMM-Newton ToO observation of H 1743-322
during its outburst in September 2014. Based on data of eight outbursts
observed in the last 10 years we expected to catch the start of the
hard-to-soft state transition. The fact that neither the general shape of the
observed power density spectrum nor the characteristic frequency show an energy
dependence implies that the source still stays in the low-hard state at the
time of our observation near outburst peak. The spectral properties agree with
the source being in the low-hard state and a Swift/XRT monitoring of the
outburst reveals that H 1743-322 stays in the low-hard state during the entire
outburst (a. k. a. 'failed outburst'). We derive the averaged QPO waveform and
obtain phase-resolved spectra. Comparing the phase-resolved spectra to the
phase averaged energy spectrum reveals spectral pivoting. We compare
variability on long and short time scales using covariance spectra and find
that the covariance ratio does not show an increase towards lower energies as
has been found in other black hole X-ray binaries. There are two possible
explanations: either the absence of additional disc variability on longer time
scales is related to the rather high inclination of H 1743-322 compared to
other black hole X-ray binaries or it is the reason why we observe H 1743-322
during a failed outburst. More data on failed outbursts and on high-inclination
sources will be needed to investigate these two possibilities further.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, accepted by MNRA
