Decomposing the Spectrum of Ultra-Luminous X-ray Pulsar NGC 300 ULX-1

TL;DR

This study employs a novel spectral decomposition method on X-ray data of ULXP NGC 300 ULX-1, revealing two distinct emission regions and providing insights into the pulsar's accretion flow structure.

Contribution

It introduces a new spectral analysis technique adapted from AGN studies to dissect ULXP spectra and identifies separate emission components linked to pulsation phases.

Findings

The pulsation cycle can be divided into two distinct X-ray variability intervals.

A stable disk component with a 720 km inner radius and 0.25 keV temperature was identified.

A pulsation-coincident component explained by Comptonization of a 0.22 keV blackbody was characterized.

Abstract

A phase-resolved analysis on the X-ray spectrum of Ultra-Luminous X-ray Pulsar (ULXP) NGC 300 ULX-1 is performed with data taken with XMM-Newton and NuSTAR on 2016 December 16th. In addition to the classical phase-restricting analysis, a method developed in active galactic nuclei studies is newly employed for ULXP. It has revealed that the pulsation cycle of the source can be divided into two intervals in terms of X-ray variability. This suggests the rotating flow consists of at least two representative emission regions. Furthermore, the new method successfully decomposed the spectrum into an independent pair in each interval. One is an unchanging-component spectrum that can be reproduced by a standard disk model with a $720^{+220}_{-120}$ km inner radius and a $0.25\pm0.03$ keV peak temperature. The other is the spectrum of the component that coincides with the pulsation. This was explained with a Comptonization of a $0.22^{+0.2}_{-0.1}$ keV blackbody and exhibited a harder photon index in the brighter phase interval of two. The results are consistent with a picture that the pulsating emission originates from a funnel-like flow formed within the magnetosphere, and the inner flow exhibiting a harder continuum is observed exclusively when the opening cone points to the observer.