English

XMM-Newton Campaign On Ultraluminous X-ray Source NGC 1313 X-1: Wind vs. State Variability

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2020-01-22 v2

Abstract

Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are thought to be powered by neutron stars and black holes accreting beyond the Eddington limit. If the compact object is a black hole or a neutron star with a magnetic field 1012\lesssim10^{12} G, the accretion disc is expected to thicken and launch powerful winds driven by radiation pressure. Evidence of such winds has been found in ULXs through the high-resolution spectrometers onboard XMM-Newton, but several unknowns remain, such as the geometry and launching mechanism of these winds. In order to better understand ULX winds and their link to the accretion regime, we have undertaken a major campaign with XMM-Newton to study the ULX NGC 1313 X-1, which is known to exhibit strong emission and absorption features from a mildly-relativistic wind. The new observations show clear changes in the wind with a significantly weakened fast component (0.2c) and the rise of a new wind phase which is cooler and slower (0.06-0.08c). We also detect for the first time variability in the emission lines which indicates an origin within the accretion disc or in the wind. We describe the variability of the wind in the framework of variable super-Eddington accretion rate and discuss a possible geometry for the accretion disc.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.09568,
  title  = {XMM-Newton Campaign On Ultraluminous X-ray Source NGC 1313 X-1: Wind vs. State Variability},
  author = {C. Pinto and D. J. Walton and E. Kara and M. L. Parker and R. Soria and P. Kosec and M. J. Middleton and W. N. Alston and A. C. Fabian and M. Guainazzi and T. P. Roberts and F. Fuerst and H. P. Earnshaw and R. Sathyaprakash and D. Barret},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.09568},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

20 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS