Spectral properties of the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1636-53, XTE J1739-285 and MAXI J1816-195

TL;DR

This study analyzes simultaneous NICER and NuSTAR observations of three neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries, revealing the geometry and properties of their coronae and the influence of seed photon sources on spectral states.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the corona geometry, seed photon origins, and pair-production conditions in neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries using reflection modeling.

Findings

More than 50% of NS photons feed the corona in the hard state.

Corona is likely close to the neutron star, supporting lamp-post or boundary layer models.

Corona in NS systems is not pair-dominated, possibly due to cooling from NS photons.

Abstract

We investigated simultaneous NICER plus NuSTAR observations of three neutron star low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1636-53, XTE J1739-285 and MAXI J1816-195 using the latest reflection models, with the seed photons feeding into the corona originating from either the neutron star (NS) or the accretion disk. We found that, for the sources in the hard spectral state, more than $\sim$ 50% of the NS photons enter into the corona if NS provides seed photons, while only $\sim$ 3%-5% disk photons go to the corona if seed photons come from the disk. This finding, together with the derived small height of the corona, favors the lamp-post geometry or boundary layer scenario where the corona is close to the central neutron star. Additionally, we found that the source of the seed photons has big influence in the significance of the NS radiation, especially for the soft spectral state. This result may help explain why the NS radiation in MAXI J1816-195 is weak in the previous work. More importantly, for the first time, we explored the properties of the corona in the NS systems with the compactness ($l-\theta$) diagram. We found that the corona in the NS systems all lie in the left side of the pair-production forbidden region, away from the predicted pair-production lines. This finding indicates that either the corona in these NS systems is not pair-dominated, possibly due to the additional cooling from NS photons, or the corona is composed of both thermal and non-thermal electrons.