Hybrid Comptonization and Electron–Positron Pair Production in the Black-hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1820+070 - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue The Astrophysical journal letters Année : 2021

Hybrid Comptonization and Electron–Positron Pair Production in the Black-hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1820+070

Andrzej A. Zdziarski
  • Fonction : Auteur
Piotr Lubiński
  • Fonction : Auteur
Michał Szanecki
  • Fonction : Auteur
Andrzej Niedźwiecki
  • Fonction : Auteur
Alexandra Veledina
  • Fonction : Auteur
Juri Poutanen
Marta A. Dziełak
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

We study X-ray and soft gamma-ray spectra from the hard state of the accreting black-hole binary MAXI J1820+070. We perform an analysis of two joint spectra from NuSTAR and INTEGRAL, covering the range of 3–650 keV, and of an average joint spectrum over the rise of the hard state, covering the 3–2200 keV range. The spectra are well modeled by Comptonization of soft seed photons. However, the distributions of the scattering electrons are not purely thermal; we find they have substantial high-energy tails, well modeled as power laws. The photon tail in the average spectrum is detected well beyond the threshold for electron–positron pair production, 511 keV. This allows us to calculate the rate of the electron–positron pair production and put a lower limit on the size of the source from pair equilibrium. At the fitted Thomson optical depth of the Comptonizing plasma, the limit is about 4 gravitational radii. If we adopt the sizes estimated by us from the reflection spectroscopy of >20 gravitational radii, the fractional pair abundance becomes much less than unity. The low pair abundance is confirmed by the lack of both an annihilation feature and of a pair absorption cutoff above 511 keV in the average spectrum.

Dates et versions

hal-03210332 , version 1 (27-04-2021)

Identifiants

Citer

Andrzej A. Zdziarski, Elisabeth Jourdain, Piotr Lubiński, Michał Szanecki, Andrzej Niedźwiecki, et al.. Hybrid Comptonization and Electron–Positron Pair Production in the Black-hole X-Ray Binary MAXI J1820+070. The Astrophysical journal letters, 2021, 914 (1), pp.L5. ⟨10.3847/2041-8213/ac0147⟩. ⟨hal-03210332⟩
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