English

Relativistic Iron Line Emission from the Neutron Star Low-mass X-ray Binary 4U 1636-536

Astrophysics 2013-05-15 v2

Abstract

We present an analysis of XMM-Newton and RXTE data from three observations of the neutron star LMXB 4U 1636-536. The X-ray spectra show clear evidence of a broad, asymmetric iron emission line extending over the energy range 4-9 keV. The line profile is consistent with relativistically broadened Fe K-alpha emission from the inner accretion disk. The Fe K-alpha line in 4U 1636-536 is considerably broader than the asymmetric iron lines recently found in other neutron star LMXBs, which indicates a high disk inclination. We find evidence that the broad iron line feature is a combination of several K-alpha lines from iron in different ionization states.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0808.2214,
  title  = {Relativistic Iron Line Emission from the Neutron Star Low-mass X-ray Binary 4U 1636-536},
  author = {Dirk Pandel and Philip Kaaret and Stephane Corbel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0808.2214},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures, Published in the Astrophysical Journal