Hot Outflowing Gas from the X-ray Binary Hercules X-1

Abstract

We present a unified picture of outflowing gas from the X-ray binary system Hercules X-1/HZ Herculis. We suggest that the outflowing gas (a wind) causes UV emission seen in mid-eclipse, narrow UV absorption lines, and broad UV P Cygni lines. Observations with the FOS and STIS spectrographs on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) show UV emission lines in the middle of X-ray eclipse, when the X-ray heated atmosphere of the normal star and accretion disk should be entirely hidden from view. Narrow absorption lines (FWHM~50 km/s) blueshifted by 500 km/s during observations in 1998 and by 400 km/s during observations in 1999 were seen from phi=0.0-0.3. The line velocity was constant to within 20 km/s. The P Cygni profiles from Hercules~X-1 have optical depths tau<1 with a maximum expansion velocity of 600 km/s, and are seen in the resonance lines N V 1238.8,1242.8, Si IV 1393.7,1402.8, and C IV 1548.2, 1550.8. We discuss whether this wind originates in the accretion disk or on the companion star, and how the relevant ions can survive X-ray ionization by the neutron star.

Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, v562, December 2001

References in corpus (6)

• Infrared spectroscopy of low-mass X-ray binaries II
• The Discovery of Broad P Cygni X-ray Lines from Circinus X-1 with the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer
• Infrared Spectroscopy of GX 1+4/V2116 Oph: Evidence for a Fast Red Giant Wind?
• Discovery of mHz UV Quasiperiodic Oscillations in Hercules X-1
• Hercules X-1: Empirical Models of UV Emission Lines
• Eclipsing Broad Emission Lines in Hercules X-1: Evidence for a Disk Wind?

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