Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006head....9.0175w&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, HEAD meeting #9, #1.75; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.341
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Accretion-powered X-ray pulsars are among the most luminous X-ray sources in the Galaxy yet no satisfactory model for the formation of their observed X-ray spectra has emerged. We report on a self-consistent calculation of the spectrum emerging from a magnetically funneled pulsar accretion flow that includes a treatment of the bulk and thermal Comptonization occurring in a radiation-dominated shock. Using a rigorous eigenfunction expansion method, we obtain a closed-form expression for the Green's function describing the upscattering of monochromatic radiation injected into the flow. The Green's function is convolved with bremsstrahlung, cyclotron, and blackbody source terms to calculate the emergent photon spectrum. We show that energization of photons in the shock naturally produces a X-ray spectrum with a relatively flat continuum and a high-energy exponential cutoff. Finally, we demonstrate the good agreement of our model with the spectra of bright pulsars such as Her X-1 and Cen X-3.
This research was funded by NASA and the Office of Naval Research.
Becker Peter A.
Wolff Michael Thomas
Wolfram Kenneth D.
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