High Resolution and Broad Band Spectra of Low Mass X-ray Binaries: A Comparison between Black Holes and Neutron Stars

Abstract

A common question about compact objects in high energy astrophysics is whether it is possible to distinguish black hole from neutron star systems with some other property that is not the mass of the compact object. Up to now a few characteristics have been found which are typical of neutron stars (like quasi periodic oscillations at kHz frequencies or type-I X-ray bursts), but in many respects black hole and neutron star systems show very similar behaviors. We present here a spectral study of low mass X-ray binaries containing neutron stars and show that these systems have spectral characteristics that are very similar to what is found for black hole systems. This implies that it is unlikely we can distinguish between black holes and neutron stars from their X-ray spectra, except for the fact that black hole systems show sometimes a more extreme behavior with respect to neutron star systems.

Proceedings of the Frascati Workshop 2005: Multifrequency Behaviour of High Energy Cosmic Sources, Vulcano, May 23-28. 13 pages including 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• A long hard look at MCG-6-30-15 with XMM-Newton
• Evidence for Black Hole Spin in GX 339-4: XMM-Newton EPIC-pn and RXTE Spectroscopy of the Very High State
• The Relativistic Fe Emission Line in XTE J1650-500 with BeppoSAX: Evidence for Black Hole Spin and Light Bending Effects?
• A broad iron line in the Chandra/HETG spectrum of 4U 1705-44

Cited by in corpus (5)

• On the Constancy of the Photon Index of X-ray spectra of 4U~1728-34 through all spectral states
• The broadband spectral analysis of 4U 1702-429 using XMM-Newton and BeppoSAX data
• On the origin of the hard X-ray tail in neutron-star X-ray binaries
• Hard X-ray Tail Discovered in the Clocked Burster GS 1826-238
• Multiwavelength study of 1eRASS J085039.9-421151 with eROSITA NuSTAR and X-shooter