Color-color diagrams as tools for assessment of the variable absorption in high mass X-ray binaries

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Color-color diagrams as tools for assessment of the variable absorption in high mass X-ray binaries
المؤلفون: Grinberg, V., Nowak, M. A., Hell, N.
المصدر: A&A 643, A109 (2020)
سنة النشر: 2020
المجموعة: Astrophysics
مصطلحات موضوعية: Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
الوصف: High mass X-ray binaries hold the promise of giving us understanding of the structure of the winds of their supermassive companion stars by using the emission from the compact object as a backlight to evaluate the variable absorption in the structured stellar wind. The wind along the line of sight can change on timescales as short as minutes and below. However, such short timescales are not available to direct measurement of absorption through X-ray spectroscopy with the current generation of X-ray telescopes. In this paper, we demonstrate the usability of color-color diagrams for assessing the variable absorption in wind accreting high mass X-ray binary systems. We employ partial covering models to describe the spectral shape of high mass X-ray binaries and assess the implication of different absorbers and their variability on the shape of color-color tracks. We show that taking into account the ionization of the absorber, and in particular accounting for the variation of ionization with absorption depth, is crucial to describe the observed behavior well.
Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, submitted to A&A, comments welcome
نوع الوثيقة: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202039183
URL الوصول: http://arxiv.org/abs/2008.08159
رقم الأكسشن: edsarx.2008.08159
قاعدة البيانات: arXiv