Implications of IXPE's Polarization Results of BH X-Ray Binaries




Rodrigues Cavero Nicole, Krawczynski Henric, Dovčiak Michal, Muleri Fabio, Veledina Alexandra, Podgorný Jakub, Ratheesh Ajay, Accreting Stellar-Mass BH Working Group

High Energy Astrophysics Division Meetings

PublisherAmerican Institute of Physics

Waikōloa, Hawaiʻi

2023

Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society

HEAD20 Abstracts : The 20th Meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division

Bulletin of the AAS

55

4

0002-7537

2330-9458

https://baas.aas.org/pub/2023n4i207p05/release/1

https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/387034773



X-ray polarimetry offers a unique insight into black hole X-ray binary systems that are found predominantly in the high soft (HSS) and low hard (LHS) states. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) recently observed Cygnus X-1 and Cygnus X-3 in the LHS where black hole coronal emission tends to dominate. The polarization signature of this coronal Comptonized emission can be used to constrain the geometry of the corona, its viewing angle, and the origin of soft X-ray seed photons. IXPE also observed 4U1630-47 and LMC X-1 in the HSS where the polarization of thermal emission from the optically thick accretion disk can be used to rectify the degeneracies between black hole mass, spin, and inclination. We report on the physical consequences of these first IXPE observations and the science driven by this new chapter in X-ray polarimetry.


Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 15:43