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On the Lack of Thermal Emission from the Quiescent Black Hole XTE J1118+480: Evidence for the Event Horizon | | Jeffrey E. McClintock
; Ramesh Narayan
; George B. Rybicki
; | | Date: |
10 Mar 2004 | | Journal: | Astrophys.J. 615 (2004) 402-415 | | Subject: | astro-ph | | Affiliation: | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics | | Abstract: | A soft component of thermal emission is very commonly observed from the surfaces of quiescent, accreting neutron stars. We searched with Chandra for such a surface component of emission from the dynamical black-hole candidate XTE J1118+480 (= J1118), which has a primary mass of about 8 solar masses. None was found, as one would expect if the compact X-ray source is a bona fide black hole that possesses an event horizon. The X-ray spectrum of J1118 is well-fitted by a simple power-law model. In our search for a thermal component, we fitted our Chandra data to a power-law model (with slope and column density fixed) plus a series of nine hydrogen-atmosphere models with radii ranging from 9/8 to 2.8 Schwarzschild radii. For the more compact models, we included the important effect of self-irradiation of the atmosphere. Because of the extremely low column density to J1118, we obtained very strong limits on a hypothetical thermal source: kT(infinity) < 0.011 keV and L(infinity) < 9.4E30 erg/s (99% confidence level). In analogy with neutron stars, we examine two possible sources of thermal radiation from a hypothetical surface of J1118: deep crustal heating and accretion in quiescence. We conclude that if J1118 possesses a surface composed of normal nuclear matter, we would have detected thermal radiation from this surface. The absence of thermal radiation indicates that J1118 is a true black hole with an event horizon. | | Source: | arXiv, astro-ph/0403251 | | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites | |
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