2009/01/31 by E. M. Cackett, D. Altamirano, A. Patruno +4 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Accretion disc #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Emission spectrum #Line (geometry) #Magnetic field #RADIUS #Spectral line #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/694/1/l21
5 pages, 3 figs, 2 tables, accepted to ApJL
arxiv created 2009/02/04 · openalex publication_date 2009/02/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
During the 2008 September–October outburst of the accreting millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4−3658, the source was observed by both Suzaku and XMM-Newton approximately 1 day apart. Spectral analysis reveals a broad relativistic Fe Kα emission line which is present in both data sets, as has recently been reported for other neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries. The properties of the Fe K line observed during each observation are very similar. From modeling the Fe line, we determine the inner accretion disk radius to be 13.2 ± 2.5 GM c −2 . The inner disk radius measured from the Fe K line suggests that the accretion disk is not very receded in the hard state. If the inner disk (as measured by the Fe line) is truncated at the magnetospheric radius this implies a magnetic field strength of ∼3 × 10 8 G at the magnetic poles, consistent with other independent estimates.