Monitoring Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients with Swift. Rise to the outburst in IGR J16479-4514

TL;DR

This study presents detailed Swift observations of the SFXT IGR J16479-4514, capturing a bright outburst and revealing its variable, highly absorbed X-ray emission over several days, providing insights into its accretion behavior.

Contribution

First simultaneous broad-band observation of an SFXT outburst with unknown periodicity, showing prolonged accretion phases and detailed spectral properties.

Findings

Outburst flux exceeded 10$^{-9}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$.

X-ray emission was highly variable and absorbed.

Accretion phase lasts longer than a few hours.

Abstract

IGR J16479-4514 is a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT), a new class of High Mass X-ray Binaries, whose number is rapidly growing thanks to the observations of the Galactic plane performed with the INTEGRAL satellite. IGR J16479-4514 has been regularly monitored with Swift/XRT since November 2007, to study the quiescent emission, the outburst properties and their recurrence. A new bright outburst, reaching fluxes above 10$^{-9}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$, was caught by the Swift/BAT. Swift immediately re-pointed at the target with the narrow-field instruments so that, for the first time, an outburst from a SFXT where a periodicity in the outburst recurrence is unknown could be observed simultaneously in the 0.2--150 keV energy band. The X-ray emission is highly variable and spans almost four orders of magnitude in count rate during the Swift/XRT observations covering a few days before and after the bright peak. The X-ray spectrum in outburst is hard and highly absorbed. The power-law fit resulted in a photon index of 0.98$\pm{0.07}$, and in an absorbing column density of $\sim5\times10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$. These observations demonstrate that in this source (similarly to what was observed during the 2007 outburst from the periodic SFXT IGR J11215-5952), the accretion phase lasts much longer than a few hours.