English

A strongly truncated inner accretion disk in the Rapid Burster

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2017-11-29 v1

Abstract

The neutron star (NS) low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) the Rapid Burster (RB; MXB 1730-335) uniquely shows both Type-I and Type-II X-ray bursts. The origin of the latter is ill-understood but has been linked to magnetospheric gating of the accretion flow. We present a spectral analysis of simultaneous Swift, NuSTAR and XMM-Newton observations of the RB during its 2015 outburst. Although a broad Fe-K line has been observed before, the high quality of our observations allows us to model this line using relativistic reflection models for the first time. We find that the disk is strongly truncated at 41.85.3+6.741.8^{+6.7}_{-5.3} gravitational radii (87\sim 87 km), which supports magnetospheric Type-II burst models and strongly disfavors models involving instabilities at the innermost stable circular orbit. Assuming that the RB magnetic field indeed truncates the disk, we find B=(6.2±1.5)×108B = (6.2 \pm 1.5) \times 10^8 G, larger than typically inferred for NS LMXBs. In addition, we find a low inclination (i=29±2oi = 29\pm2^{\rm o}). Finally, we comment on the origin of the Comptonized and thermal components in the RB spectrum.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.00384,
  title  = {A strongly truncated inner accretion disk in the Rapid Burster},
  author = {J. van den Eijnden and T. Bagnoli and N. Degenaar and A. M. Lohfink and M. L. Parker and J. J. M. in 't Zand and A. C. Fabian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.00384},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters