Simultaneous ASCA And RXTE Observations of Cygnus X--1 During Its 1996 State Transition

Abstract

We report results from simultaneous ASCA and RXTE observations of Cyg X-1 when the source made a rare transition from the hard (= low) state to the soft (= high) state in 1996. These observations together cover a broad energy range ~0.7--50 keV with a moderate energy resolution at the iron K-band, thus make it possible to disentangle various spectral components. The low-energy spectrum is dominated by an ultra-soft component, which is likely to be the emission from the hottest inner portion of the accretion disk around the black hole. At high energies, the X-ray spectrum can be described by a Comptonized spectrum with a reflection component. The Compton corona, which upscatters soft ``seed photons'' to produce the hard X-ray emission, is found to have a y-parameter ~0.28. The hard X-ray emission illuminates the accretion disk and the re-emitted photons produce the observed ``reflection bump''. We show that the reflecting medium subtends only a small solid angle ($\sim 0.15\times 2\pi$), but has a large ionization parameter such that iron is ionized up to \ion{Fe}{24}-\ion{Fe}{26}. The presence of a broad iron line at $6.58\pm 0.04$ keV is also consistent with a highly ionized disk, if we take into account the gravitational and Doppler shift of the line energy. These results imply a geometry with a central corona surrounding the black hole and the reflection occurring in the innermost region of the disk where matter is highly ionized.

11 pages, including 2 wide tables (to be printed out in landscape mode) and 3 ps figures. To appear in ApJ Letters

References in corpus (3)

• Temporal Properties of Cygnus X-1 During the Spectral Transitions
• Self-Consistent Thermal Accretion Disk Corona Models for Compact Objects: II. Application to Cygnus X-1
• The 1996 Soft State Transitions of Cygnus X-1

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