Related papers: Black Hole and Neutron Star Transients in Quiescen…
We analyse the spectra of black hole (BH) and neutron star (NS) X-ray binaries (XBs) in the hard state using archival RXTE observations. We find that there is a clear dichotomy in the strength of Comptonisation between NS and BH sources, as…
The composition of the outer 100 m of a neutron star sets the heat flux that flows outwards from the core. For an accreting neutron star in an X-ray transient, the thermal quiescent flux depends sensitively on the amount of hydrogen and…
Models of Soft X--ray Transients are presented and compared with observations. The importance of inner advection--dominated flows in quiescent transient sources is discussed, as well as the problem of global stability of the standard outer…
Context. Ultracompact X-ray binaries (UCXBs) typically consist of a white dwarf donor and a neutron star or black hole accretor. The evolution of UCXBs and very low mass ratio binaries in general is poorly understood. Aims. We investigate…
Using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RossiXTE), astronomers have discovered that disk-accreting neutron stars with weak magnetic fields produce three distinct types of high-frequency X-ray oscillations. These oscillations are powered by…
Coalescences of neutron stars and white dwarfs are relatively frequent phenomena, outnumbering other types of compact object mergers (neutron stars and black holes without involving white dwarfs) altogether. Such event potentially can…
We discuss new observations of X-ray novae with Chandra which provide strong evidence that black holes have event horizons. The evidence is based on the finding that black hole X-ray novae in quiescence are approximately 100 times fainter…
We report on our analysis of 300 ks of Chandra observations of the neutron star soft X-ray transient 1H1905+000 in quiescence. We do not detect the source down to a 95% confidence unabsorbed flux upper limit of 2E-16 erg cm-2 s-1 in the…
The radiative mechanism of the black hole X-ray transients (BHXTs) in their quiescent states (defined as the 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity $\le 10^{34}{\rm \,erg\,s^{-1}}$) remains unclear. In this work, we investigate the quasi-simultaneous…
We have compiled and analysed reports from the literature of (quasi-)simultaneous observations of X-ray transients at radio and X-ray wavelengths and compared them with each other and with more unusual radio-bright sources such as Cygnus…
Recent observations suggest that neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries rotate within a narrow range of spin frequencies clustered around 300 Hz. A proposed explanation for this remarkable fact is that gravitational radiation from a…
We present the evolution of a supersonic wind interacting with a Boson Star (BS) and compare the resulting wind density profile with that of the shock cone formed when the wind is accreted by a non-rotating Black Hole (BH) of the same mass.…
The thesis studies the X-ray emission from the Galactic compact objects (accreting neutron stars and black holes), using mainly the RXTE data. In particular following results have been included: spectral evolution of X-ray transients GRS…
Stellar-mass black holes (BHs) are mostly found in X-ray transients, a subclass of X-ray binaries that exhibit violent outbursts. None of the 50 Galactic BHs known show eclipses, which is surprising for a random distribution of…
Most black holes (BHs) formed in collapsing stars have low spin, though some are expected to acquire a magnetic accretion disk during the collapse. While such BH disks can launch magnetically driven winds, their physics and observational…
Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) represent the most extreme case of X-ray variability in High Mass X-ray Binaries hosting blue supergiant companions. Mainly discovered thanks to the INTEGRAL monitoring of the Galactic plane, these…
Recently two fast X-ray transients (XT1 and XT2) have been reported from the search in the Chandra Deep Field (CDF) data. Each transient shows an initial plateau lasting around hundreds to thousands seconds followed by a rapid decay in the…
We report on the first X-ray observations of the neutron star soft X-ray transient (SXT) XTE J2123-058 in quiescence, made by Chandra and BeppoSAX, as well as contemporaneous optical observations. In 2002, the Chandra spectrum of XTE…
Supergiant High Mass X-ray Binary systems (sgHMXBs) consist of a massive, late type, star and a neutron star. The massive stars exhibits strong, radiatively driven, stellar winds. Wind accretion onto compact object triggers X-ray emission,…
We present X-ray properties of optically-selected intermediate-mass (~10^5--10^6 M_Sun) black holes (BHs) in active galaxies (AGNs), using data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Our observations are a continuation of a pilot study by…