Detection of the orbital modulation of Fe K$\alpha$ fluorescence emission in Centaurus X-3 using the high-resolution spectrometer Resolve onboard XRISM

TL;DR

This study detects orbital modulation of Fe Kα fluorescence in Centaurus X-3 using XRISM, revealing the emission site and dynamics, and highlighting the need for more complex models to explain the observations.

Contribution

First detection of sinusoidal orbital modulation of Fe Kα line velocity in Centaurus X-3 with high-resolution spectroscopy, constraining the emission site and dynamics.

Findings

Fe Kα line shows sinusoidal RV modulation with orbital phase.

RV amplitude is smaller than expected if emission is from the neutron star surface.

Current models cannot fully explain the observed EW and velocity dependence.

Abstract

The Fe K$\alpha$ fluorescence line emission in X-ray spectra is a powerful diagnostic tool for various astrophysical objects to reveal the distribution of cold matter around photo-ionizing sources. The advent of the X-ray microcalorimeter onboard the \textit{XRISM} satellite will bring new constraints on the emission line. We present one of the first such results for the high-mass X-ray binary Centaurus X-3, which is composed of an O-type star and a neutron star (NS). We conducted a 155 ks observation covering an entire binary orbit. A weak Fe K$\alpha$ line was detected in all orbital phases at an equivalent width (EW) of 10--20 eV. We found for the first time that its radial velocity (RV) is sinusoidally modulated by the orbital phase. The RV amplitude is 248 $\pm$ 13 km s$^{-1}$, which is significantly smaller than the value (391 km s$^{-1}$) expected if the emission is from the NS surface, but is consistent if the emission takes place at the O star surface. We discuss several possibilities of the line production site, including the NS surface, O star surface, O star wind, and accretion stream from the O star to the NS. We ran radiative transfer calculation for some of them assuming spherically-symmetric density and velocity profiles and an isotropic distribution of X-ray emission from the NS. None of them explains the observed EW and velocity dispersion dependence on the orbital phase, suggesting that more elaborated modeling is needed. In other words, the present observational results have capability to constrain deviations from these assumptions.