2001/04/26 by K. O’Brien, K O'Brien, K. Horne +3
Decision Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #SAS software applications and methods #Scientific Measurement and Uncertainty Evaluation #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0104428
8 pages, including figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the Astro-tomography workshop, Brussels, July 2000, eds. H.Boffin, D.Steeghs, J.Cuypers, Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Physics Series
arxiv created 2001/04/26 · openalex publication_date 2001/04/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In X-ray binaries much of the optical/UV emission arises from X-rays reprocessed by material in the accretion disk, stream and the companion star. The resulting reprocessed variability will be delayed in time with respect to the X-ray variability by an amount depending on the position of the reprocessing regions. We can determine a range of time-delays present in the system. This time-delay transfer function can be used to `echo-map' the geometry of the reprocessing regions in the binary system. We present our modeling of this transfer function and show results from our echo-mapping campaign using X-ray lightcurves from RXTE, simultaneous with HST. In the X-ray transient, GRO j1655-40, shortly after the 1996 outburst, we find evidence for reprocessing in the outer regions of a thick accretion disk.