Simultaneous constraints on the mass and radius of Aql X-1 from quiescence and X-ray burst observations

Abstract

The measurement of neutron star mass and radius is one of the most direct way to distinguish between various dense matter equations of state. The mass and radius of accreting neutron stars hosted in low mass X-ray binaries can be constrained by several methods, including photospheric radius expansion from type-I X-ray bursts and from quiescent spectra. In this paper, we apply for the first time these two methods simultaneously to constrain the mass and radius of Aql X-1, as a reliable distance estimation, high signal-to-noise ratio quiescent spectra from Chandra and XMM-Newton, and photospheric radius expansion bursts from RXTE are available. This is also used to verify the consistency between the two methods, and to narrow down the uncertainties of the neutron star mass and radius. It is found that the distance to Aql X-1 should be in the range of $4.0-5.75$ kpc, based on the overlapping confidence regions between photospheric radius expansion burst and quiescent spectra methods. In addition, we show that the mass and radius determined for the compact star in Aql X-1 are compatible with strange star equations of state and conventional neutron star models.

16 pages, 9 figures, accepted by ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• NICER observations of the evidence of Poynting-Robertson drag and disk reflection during type I X-ray bursts from 4U 1636$-$536
• Discovery of transition from marginally stable burning to unstable burning after a superburst in Aql X-1
• Optical and X-ray variations during 5 outbursts of Aql X-1 in 3.6 years from 2016
• Radio pulse search from Aql X-1