A Thermal-Nonthermal Inverse Compton Model for Cyg X-1
Abstract
Using Monte Carlo methods to simulate the inverse Compton scattering of soft photons, we model the spectrum of the Galactic black hole candidate Cyg X-1, which shows evidence of a nonthermal tail extending beyond a few hundred keV. We assume an ad hoc sphere of leptons, whose energy distribution consists of a Maxwellian plus a high energy power-law tail, and inject 0.5 keV blackbody photons. The spectral data is used to constrain the nonthermal plasma fraction and the power-law index assuming a reasonable Maxwellian temperature and Thomson depth. A small but non-negligible fraction of nonthermal leptons is needed to explain the power-law tail.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9707006,
title = {A Thermal-Nonthermal Inverse Compton Model for Cyg X-1},
author = {A. Crider and E. P. Liang and I. A. Smith and D. Lin and M. Kusunose},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9707006},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 PostScript figure, uses aipproc.sty, to appear in Proceedings of Fourth Compton Symposium