Testing slim-disk models on the thermal spectra of LMC X-3
Abstract
Slim-disk models describe accretion flows at high luminosities, while reducing to the standard thin disk form in the low luminosity limit. We have developed a new spectral model, slimbb, within the framework of XSPEC, which describes fully relativistic slim-disk accretion and includes photon ray-tracing that starts from the disk photosphere, rather than the equatorial plane. We demonstrate the features of this model by applying it to RXTE spectra of the persistent black-hole X-ray binary LMC X-3. LMC X-3 has the virtues of exhibiting large intensity variations while maintaining itself in soft spectral states which are well described using accretion-disk models, making it an ideal candidate to test the aptness of slimbb. Our results demonstrate consistency between the low-luminosity (thin-disk) and high luminosity (slim-disk) regimes. We also show that X-ray continuum-fitting in the high accretion rate regime can powerfully test black-hole accretion disk models.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1106.0009,
title = {Testing slim-disk models on the thermal spectra of LMC X-3},
author = {Odele Straub and Michal Bursa and Aleksander Sadowski and James F. Steiner and Marek A. Abramowicz and Wlodzimierz Kluzniak and Jeffrey E. McClintock and Ramesh Narayan and Ronald A. Remillard},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1106.0009},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to A&A