Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/2289/3923
Title: Effect of pulse profile variations on measurement of eccentricity in orbits of Cen X-3 and SMC X-1
Authors: Raichur, Harsha
Paul, Biswajit
Keywords: stars: emission-line
Be, stars: neutron
X-rays: individual
Cen X-3, X-rays
SMC X-1
Issue Date: Jan-2010
Publisher: Wiley Interscience for the RAS
Citation: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2010, Vol.401, p1532
Abstract: It has long been argued that better timing precision allowed by satellites like Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) will allow us to measure the orbital eccentricity and the angle of periastron of some of the bright persistent high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) and hence a possible measurement of apsidal motion in these system. Measuring the rate of apsidal motion allows one to estimate the apsidal motion constant of the mass losing companion star and hence allows for the direct testing of the stellar structure models for these giant stars present in the HMXBs. In the present paper, we use the archival RXTE data of two bright persistent sources, namely Cen X-3 and SMC X-1, to measure the very small orbital eccentricity and the angle of periastron. We find that the small variations in the pulse profiles of these sources, rather than the intrinsic time resolution provided by RXTE, limit the accuracy with which we can measure arrival time of the pulses from these sources. This influences the accuracy with which one can measure the orbital parameters, especially the very small eccentricity and the angle of periastron in these sources. The observations of SMC X-1 in the year 2000 were taken during the high-flux state of the source and we could determine the orbital eccentricity and ω using this data set
Description: Restricted Access. An open-access version is available at arXiv.org (one of the alternative locations)
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2289/3923
ISSN: 1365-2966 (Online)
0035-8711
Alternative Location: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010MNRAS.401.1532R
http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.4271
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15778.x
Copyright: 2009 Wiley Interscience for the RAS
Appears in Collections:Research Papers (A&A)

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