Self-Consistent Comptonized Models for the Spectra of Low Mass X-Ray Binaries

Details Self-Consistent Comptonized Models for the Spectra of Low Mass X-Ray Binaries Self-Consistent Comptonized Models for the Spectra of Low Mass X-Ray Binaries

Sep 1990

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1990mnras.246..287p&link_type=abstract

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 246, NO.2/SEP15, P. 287, 1990

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Scientific paper

We have constructed Comptonized spectral models and fitted them to EXOSAT spectra of eleven bright low-mass X-ray binaries. The models are based on the premise that these systems contain circumstellar material which modifies the X-ray spectrum passing through it. We idealize this situation as a point source of X-rays, the neutron star, embedded in an optically thick scattering cloud. The temperature and ionization structure of the cloud are determined in a self-consistent manner. The emerging spectrum is a result of the interaction between the radiation field and the material in the cloud.
By interpolating on a four-dimensional grid of pre-computed models, we are able to perform spectral fits to observed data in the usual way. Our fits to the X-ray continuum are as good as those obtained using standard two-component models, and a number of interesting systematic trends are apparent in the fitted model parameters.
Envelope sizes and scattering depths are found to be consistent with other observational properties of these systems, and the correlation of scattering depth with luminosity is natural provided that X-ray luminosity increases monotonically with accretion rate in the sources we study. The iron emission line seen in some systems cannot be reproduced by our basic model, but we demonstrate that it could originate from denser blobs of material arising from thermal instability in an outfiowing envelope. The model is compared with popular `two-component' interpretations of these spectra, and it is argued that the Comptonized model is physically more satisfactory.

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