X-ray Polarimetry as a Tool to Constrain Orbital Parameters in X-Ray Binaries
Abstract
X-ray binary systems consist of a companion star and a compact object in close orbit. Thanks to their copious X-ray emission, these objects have been studied in detail using X-ray spectroscopy and timing. The inclination of these systems is a major uncertainty in the determination of the mass of the compact object using optical spectroscopic methods. In this paper, we present a new method to constrain the inclination of X-ray binaries, which is based on the modeling of the polarization of X-rays photons produced by a compact source and scattered off the companion star. We describe our method and explore the potential of this technique in the specific case of the low mass X-ray binary GS 1826-238 observed by the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) observatory.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2312.16967,
title = {X-ray Polarimetry as a Tool to Constrain Orbital Parameters in X-Ray Binaries},
author = {John Rankin and Vadim Kravtsov and Fabio Muleri and Juri Poutanen and Frédéric Marin and Fiamma Capitanio and Giorgio Matt and Enrico Costa and Alessandro Di Marco and Sergio Fabiani and Fabio La Monaca and Lorenzo Marra and Paolo Soffitta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.16967},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ