The Structure of the Accretion Disk in the ADC X-Ray Binary 4U 1822-371 at Optical and Ultraviolet Wavelengths

TL;DR

This study provides detailed UV and optical observations of the accretion disk in the X-ray binary 4U 1822-371, revealing a vertically extended disk wind and refining the system's orbital parameters.

Contribution

It introduces new UV spectroscopy and photometry data, leading to improved system ephemeris and a novel interpretation of the disk wind structure in 4U 1822-371.

Findings

Confirmed rapid orbital period change

Detected high-velocity disk wind up to 4000 km/s

Identified a vertically extended, optically-thick disk component

Abstract

The eclipsing low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1822-371 is the prototypical accretion disk corona (ADC) system. We have obtained new time-resolved UV spectroscopy of 4U 1822-371 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys/Solar Blind Channel (ACS/SBC) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and new V- and J-band photometry with the 1.3-m SMARTS telescope at CTIO. We use the new data to construct its UV/optical spectral energy distribution and its orbital light curve in the UV, V, and J bands. We derive an improved ephemeris for the optical eclipses and confirm that the orbital period is changing rapidly, indicating extremely high rates of mass flow in the system; and we show that the accretion disk in the system has a strong wind with projected velocities up to 4000 km/s. We show that the disk has a vertically-extended, optically-thick component at optical wavelengths.This component extends almost to the edge of the disk and has a height equal to ~0.5 of the disk radius. As it has a low brightness temperature, we identify it as the optically-thick base of a disk wind, not as the optical counterpart of the ADC. Like previous models of 4U 1822-371, ours needs a tall obscuring wall near the edge of the accretion disk, but we interpret the wall as a layer of cooler material at the base of the disk wind, not as a tall, luminous disk rim.