Measuring the Mass Ratios of X-Ray Transients and Cataclysmic Variables from Rotational Broadening

Details Measuring the Mass Ratios of X-Ray Transients and Cataclysmic Variables from Rotational Broadening Measuring the Mass Ratios of X-Ray Transients and Cataclysmic Variables from Rotational Broadening

Dec 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003aas...20313901b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society Meeting 203, #139.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.585

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Soft X-ray transients (SXTs) are interacting binary stars in which a compact star is stripping mass from a relatively normal companion star (the ``secondary'' star). One step in the usual method for measuring the mass of the compact star in these systems is to determine the mass ratio from the rotational broadening of the absorption lines in the spectrum of the secondary. With a few outstanding exceptions (e.g., Shahbaz 2003), the observations have typically been analyzed assuming that the observed spectrum is the convolution of the spectrum of a non-rotating star with a line-broadening kernel appropriate for a rotating, spherical star. The results are often inadequate because 1) the widths of the absorption lines vary with orbital phase by 10 % or more because the secondary is not spherical, 2) the line broadening differs from line to line because the limb darkening differs from line to line, and 3) the shapes of the line profiles vary strongly with orbital phase because the secondary is not symmetric even in projection. We describe a new program for calculating the spectra of stars that fill their Roche lobes in close binary stars. The program calculates the observed spectrum by summing wavelength-dependent specific intensities over the visible surface of the distorted, lobe-filling star.

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