Analysis of RXTE-PCA Observations of SMC X-1

Abstract

We present timing and spectral analysis of RXTE-PCA observations of SMC X-1 between January 1996 and December 2003. From observations around 30 August 1996 with a time span of $\sim 6$ days, we obtain a precise timing solution for the source and resolve the eccentricity as 0.00089(6). We find an orbital decay rate of ${\dot{P}}_{orb}/P_{orb}=-3.402(7)\times 10^{-6}$ yr${}^{-1}$ which is close to the previous results. Using our timing analysis and the previous studies, we construct a $\sim 30$ year long pulse period history of the source. We show that frequency derivative shows long (i.e. more than a few years) and short (i.e. order of days) term fluctuations. From the spectral analysis, we found that all spectral parameters except Hydrogen column density showed no significant variation with time and X-ray flux. Hydrogen column density is found to be higher as X-ray flux gets lower. This may be due to the increase in soft absorption when the pulsar is partially obscured as in Her X-1 or may just be an artifact of the tail of a soft excess in energy spectrum.

17 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (5)

• Determination of the mass of the neutron star in SMC X-1, LMC X-4 and Cen X-3 with VLT/UVES
• A Long Look at the Be/X-Ray Binaries of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Tracking the Orbital and Super-orbital Periods of SMC X-1
• BeppoSAX observations of the accretion-powered X-ray pulsar SMC X-1
• INTEGRAL observations of the Small Magellanic Cloud

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• Monitoring Observations of SMC X-1's Excursions (MOOSE) I: Program Description and Initial High-State Spectral Results
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