English

Evolution of Hard X-Ray Spectra Along the Branches in Cir X-1

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

Using the data from the PCA and HEXTE on board the RXTE satellite, we investigate the evolution of the 3-200 keV spectra of the peculiar low mass X-ray binary (LMXB) Cir X-1 along the branches on its hardness-intensity diagram (HID) from the vertical horizontal branch (VHB), through the horizontal horizontal branch (HHB) and normal branch (NB), to the flaring branch (FB). We detect a power-law hard component in the spectra. It is found that the derived photon indices (Γ\Gamma) of the power-law hard component are correlated with the position on the HID. The power-law component dominates the X-ray emission of Cir X-1 in the energy band higher than 20\sim 20 keV. The fluxes of the power-law component are compared with those of the bremsstrahlung component in the spectra. A possible origin of the power-law hard component is discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0309173,
  title  = {Evolution of Hard X-Ray Spectra Along the Branches in Cir X-1},
  author = {G. Q. Ding and J. L. Qu and T. P. Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0309173},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

14 pages, 5 figures, ApJ Letter accepted