1. X-ray polarimetry and spectroscopy of the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary GX 9+9: an in-depth study with IXPE and NuSTAR
- Author
-
Ursini, F., Farinelli, R., Gnarini, A., Poutanen, J., Bianchi, S., Capitanio, F., Di Marco, A., Fabiani, S., La Monaca, F., Malacaria, C., Matt, G., Mikušincová, R., Cocchi, M., Kaaret, P., Kajava, J. J. E., Pilia, M., Zhang, W., Agudo, I., Antonelli, L. A., Bachetti, M., Baldini, L., Baumgartner, W. H., Bellazzini, R., Bongiorno, S. D., Bonino, R., Brez, A., Bucciantini, N., Castellano, S., Cavazzuti, E., Chen, C. -T., Ciprini, S., Costa, E., De Rosa, A., Del Monte, E., Di Gesu, L., Di Lalla, N., Donnarumma, I., Doroshenko, V., Dovčiak, M., Ehlert, S. R., Enoto, T., Evangelista, Y., Ferrazzoli, R., Garcia, J. A., Gunji, S., Hayashida, K., Heyl, J., Iwakiri, W., Jorstad, S. G., Karas, V., Kislat, F., Kitaguchi, T., Kolodziejczak, J. J., Krawczynski, H., Latronico, L., Liodakis, I., Maldera, S., Manfreda, A., Marin, F., Marinucci, A., Marscher, A. P., Marshall, H. L., Massaro, F., Mitsuishi, I., Mizuno, T., Muleri, F., Negro, M., Ng, C. -Y., O'Dell, S. L., Omodei, N., Oppedisano, C., Papitto, A., Pavlov, G. G., Peirson, A. L., Perri, M., Pesce-Rollins, M., Petrucci, P. -O., Possenti, A., Puccetti, S., Ramsey, B. D., Rankin, J., Ratheesh, A., Roberts, O. J., Romani, R. W., Sgrò, C., Slane, P., Soffitta, P., Spandre, G., Swartz, D. A., Tamagawa, T., Tavecchio, F., Taverna, R., Tawara, Y., Tennant, A. F., Thomas, N. E., Tombesi, F., Trois, A., Tsygankov, S. S., Turolla, R., Vink, J., Weisskopf, M. C., Wu, K., Xie, F., and Zane, S.
- Subjects
Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics - Abstract
We report on a comprehensive analysis of simultaneous X-ray polarimetric and spectral data of the bright atoll source GX 9+9 with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) and NuSTAR. The source is significantly polarized in the 4--8 keV band, with a degree of $2.2\% \pm 0.5\%$ (uncertainty at the 68% confidence level). The NuSTAR broad-band spectrum clearly shows an iron line, and is well described by a model including thermal disk emission, a Comptonized component, and reflection. From a spectro-polarimetric fit, we obtain an upper limit to the polarization degree of the disk of 4% (at 99% confidence level), while the contribution of Comptonized and reflected radiation cannot be conclusively separated. However, the polarization is consistent with resulting from a combination of Comptonization in a boundary or spreading layer, plus reflection off the disc, which gives a significant contribution in any realistic scenario., Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in A&A
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF