Discovery of a broad iron line in the black hole candidate Swift J1753.5-0127, and the disc emission in the low/hard state revisited

We analysed simultaneous archival XMM-Newton and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer observations of the X-ray binary and black hole candidate Swift J1753.5-0127. In a previous analysis of the same data, a soft thermal component was found in the X-ray spectrum, and the presence of an accretion disc extending close to the innermost stable circular orbit was proposed. This is in contrast with the standard picture in which the accretion disc is truncated at large radii in the low/hard state. We tested a number of spectral models and found that several of them fit the observed spectra without the need of a soft disc-like component. This result implies that the classical paradigm of a truncated accretion disc in the low/hard state cannot be ruled out by these data. We further discovered a broad iron emission line between 6 and 7keV in these data. From fits to the line profile we found an inner disc radius that ranges between ~6 and 16 gravitational radii, which can be in fact much larger, up to ~250 gravitational radii, depending on the model used to fit the continuum and the line. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of a fully or partially truncated accretion disc.