2001ApJ...555....7Q

Earlier work showed that the track in the X-ray hardness-intensity diagram of Cir X-1 corresponds to a Z track in its color-color diagram. In this paper, we study the cross spectrum of Cir X-1 in different regions of the hardness-intensity diagram with RXTE/PCA data. Comparing the light curves of Cir X-1 for the energy band 1.8-5.1 keV with those for 5.1-13.1 keV, we find that Cir X-1 exhibits a hard time lag on the horizontal branch and a soft time lag on both the normal and the flaring branches. This indicates that Cir X-1 is similar to GX 5-1 and Cyg X-2 on the horizontal branch but is different from them on the normal branch. We briefly discuss the mechanism of the time lags in the context of Comptonization models.