- Author
- Year
- 2013
- Title
- XMM-Newton and Swift spectroscopy of the newly discovered very faint X-ray transient IGR J17494-3030
- Journal
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Letters
- Volume | Issue number
- 436 | 1
- Pages (from-to)
- L89-L93
- Document type
- Article
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science (FNWI)
- Institute
- Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (API)
- Abstract
-
A growing group of low-mass X-ray binaries are found to be accreting at very faint X-ray luminosities of <1036 erg s−1 (2-10 keV). One such system is the new X-ray transient IGR J17494-3030. We present Swift and XMM-Newton observations obtained during its 2012 discovery outburst. The Swift observations trace the peak of the outburst, which reached a luminosity of ∼7 × 1035 (D/8 kpc)2 erg s−1 (2-10 keV). The XMM-Newton data were obtained when the outburst had decayed to an intensity of ∼8 × 1034 (D/8 kpc)2 erg s−1. The spectrum can be described by a power law with an index of Γ ∼ 1.7 and requires an additional soft component with a blackbody temperature of ∼0.37 keV (contributing ∼20 per cent to the total unabsorbed flux in the 0.5-10 keV band). Given the similarities with high-quality spectra of very faint neutron-star low-mass X-ray binaries, we suggest that the compact primary in IGR J17494-3030 is a neutron star. Interestingly, the source intensity decreased rapidly during the ∼12 h XMM-Newton observation, which was accompanied by a decrease in inferred temperature. We interpret the soft spectral component as arising from the neutron-star surface due to low-level accretion, and propose that the observed decline in intensity was the result of a decrease in the mass-accretion rate on to the neutron star.
- URL
- go to publisher's site
- Language
- English
- Persistent Identifier
- https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.403337
- Downloads
-
XMM-Newton.pdf(Final published version)
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