Diagnostics of SS433 with the RXTE
Abstract
We present our analysis of the extensive monitoring of SS433 by the RXTE observatory collected over the period 1996-2005. The difference between energy spectra taken at different precessional and orbital phases shows the presence of strong photoabsorption (N_H>1023 cm-2) near the optical star, probably due to its powerful, dense wind. Therefore the size of the secondary deduced from analysis of X-ray orbital eclipses might be significantly larger than its Roche lobe size, which must be taken into account when evaluating the mass ratio from analysis of X-ray eclipses. Assuming that a precessing accretion disk is geometrically thick, we recover the temperature profile in the X-ray emitting jet that best fits the observed precessional variations in the X-ray emission temperature. The hottest visible part of the X-ray jet is located at a distance of l_0/a∼0.06{-}0.09, or 2{-}3×1011 cm from the central compact object, and has a temperature of about T_max∼30 keV. We discovered appreciable orbital X-ray eclipses at the "crossover" precessional phases (jets are in the plane of the sky, disk is edge-on), which under model assumptions put a lower limit on the size of the optical component R/a⪆0.5 and an upper limit on a mass ratio of binary companions q=M_x/M_opt⪉0.3{-}0.35, if the X-ray opaque size of the star is not larger than 1.2RRoche, secondary.
- Publication:
-
Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Pub Date:
- December 2006
- DOI:
- 10.1051/0004-6361:20054784
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0609367
- Bibcode:
- 2006A&A...460..125F
- Keywords:
-
- accretion;
- accretion disks;
- black hole physics;
- binaries: eclipsing;
- X-rays: binaries;
- radiation mechanisms: general;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 9 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics