Estimating the kinetic luminosity function of jets from Galactic X-ray binaries

Abstract

By combining the recently derived X-ray luminosity function for Galactic X-ray binaries (XRBs) by Grimm et al. (2002) and the radio-X-ray-mass relation of accreting black holes found by Merloni et al. (2003), we derive predictions for the radio luminosity function and radio flux distribution (logN/logS) for XRBs. Based on the interpretation that the radio-X-ray-mass relation is an expression of an underlying relation between jet power and nuclear radio luminosity, we derive the kinetic luminosity function for Galactic black hole jets, up to a normalization constant in jet power. We present estimates for this constant on the basis of known ratios of jet power to core flux for AGN jets and available limits for individual XRBs. We find that, if XRB jets do indeed fall on the same radio flux--kinetic power relation as AGN jets, the estimated mean kinetic luminosity of typical low/hard state jets is of the order of <W_{XRB}> ~ 2x10^37 ergs/s, with a total integrated power output of W \~ 5.5x10^38 ergs/s. We find that the power carried in transient jets should be of comparable magnitude to that carried in low/hard state jets. Including neutron star systems increases this estimate to W ~ 9x10^38 ergs/s. We estimate the total kinetic energy output from low/hard state jets over the history of the Galaxy to be E_{XRB} ~ 7x10^56 ergs.