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arXiv 1306.6237astro-ph.HE
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吸积发光中子星的扩展层辐射

On the spreading layer emission in luminous accreting neutron stars

Mikhail G. Revnivtsev, Valery F. Suleimanov, Juri Poutanen

摘要:

中子星表面的辐射可能包含了关于其大小的信息,因此对高能天体物理学至关重要。尽管关于发光吸积中子星的辐射数据非常丰富,但它们表面的辐射很难从它们的时间平均光谱中分离出来。最近的X射线瞬变源XTE J1701-462提供了一个独特的数据集,涵盖了有史以来最大的单一源的光度范围。本文用最大谱模型无关方法提取了吸积盘内部与中子星表面之间的边界层的谱。我们显示令人信服的证据表明,边界层的能谱几乎保持不变的因素的20个光源的光度的变化。它是相当宽的,并且不能用单一温度黑体光谱来描述,这可能是因为边界层的不均匀性和色温的扩展。观测到的边界层/扩展层辐射的最大色温为kT~2.4-2.6 keV,非常接近于光球半径膨胀X射线爆发中观测到的最大色温,这是由中子星表面的极限爱丁顿通量决定的。观察到的稳定性的边界层光谱和它的最大色温强烈支持理论模型的边界/扩散层的表面上的发光吸积中子星,假设存在一个区域发射在当地爱丁顿限制。在这种情况下,光度的变化会导致该区域大小的变化,但对光谱形状的影响较小。该模型的建立将为利用发光吸积中子星边界层/扩展层的辐射测量中子星的大小提供坚实的理论基础。

英文摘要:

Emission of the neutron star surface potentially contains information about its size and thus of vital importance for high energy astrophysics. In spite of the wealth of data on the emission of luminous accreting neutron stars, the emission of their surfaces is hard to disentangle from their time averaged spectra. A recent X-ray transient source XTE J1701-462 has provided a unique dataset covering the largest ever observed luminosity range for a single source. In this paper, we extract the spectrum of the boundary layer between the inner part of the accretion disc and the neutron star surface with the help of maximally spectral model-independent method. We show compelling evidences that the energy spectrum of the boundary layer stays virtually the same over factor of 20 variations of the source luminosity. It is rather wide and cannot be described by a single temperature blackbody spectrum, probably because of the inhomogeneity of the boundary layer and a spread in the colour temperature. The observed maximum colour temperature of the boundary/spreading layer emission of kT~2.4-2.6 keV is very close to the maximum observed colour temperature in the photospheric radius expansion X-ray bursts, which is set by the limiting Eddington flux at the neutron star surface. Observed stability of the boundary layer spectrum and its maximum colour temperature strongly supports theoretical models of the boundary/spreading layers on surfaces of luminous accreting neutron stars, which assume the presence of a region emitting at the local Eddington limit. Variations in the luminosity in that case lead to changes in the size of this region, but affect less the spectral shape. Elaboration of this model will provide solid theoretical grounds for measurements of the neutron star sizes using the emission of the boundary/spreading layers of luminous accreting neutron stars.

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