Tomokage YONEYAMA

Abstract We present an analysis of X-ray observations of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in I Zw 18 based on archival data taken with Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Suzaku. This ULX is considered to be an intermediate-mass black hole candidate simply because it is in the lowest-metallicity environment among ULXs, where the formation of heavy black holes is facilitated. However, actual study of the ULX based on observations spanning for a long period has been too limited to determine its nature. In this study, we investigate the spectral evolution of the ULX up to 2014, combining the previously unpublished Suzaku data with those from the other two satellites. We derive a positive correlation of between the bolometric luminosity L and inner-disk temperature T _in on the basis of the multicolor disk blackbody model, where we exclude the Chandra data, which have the lowest luminosity and systematic residuals in the fitting. The nominal relation for the standard disk is rejected at a significance level of 1.5%. These results suggest that the ULX was in the slim-disk state during these observations except at the time of the Chandra observation, in which the ULX was likely to be in a different state. The apparent inner-disk radius appears negatively correlated with the inner-disk temperature. Moreover, we find a radial dependence of the disk temperature of T(r) ∝ r ^−p with p < 0.75, which also supports the hypothesis that the ULX has a slim disk. Therefore, the I Zw 18 ULX is most likely to be powered by a stellar-mass compact object in supercritical accretion.

Abstract 2S 0921−630 is an eclipsing low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) with an orbital period of ∼9 d. Past X-ray observations have revealed that 2S 0921−630 has an extended accretion disk corona (ADC), from which most of the X-rays from the system are emitted. We report the result of our Suzaku archival data analysis of 2S 0921−630. The average X-ray spectrum is reproduced with a blackbody emission (kTbb ∼ 0.3 keV) Comptonized by optically thick gas (“Compton cloud”; optical depth τ ∼ 21) with a temperature of ∼2 keV, combined with 13 emission lines. We find that most of the emission lines correspond to highly ionized atoms: O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, and Fe. A Kα emission line and an absorption edge of semi-neutral iron (Fe  textsci– textscxvii) are also detected. The semi-neutral iron Kα line is significantly broad, with a width of 0.11 ± 0.02 keV in sigma, which corresponds to the Doppler broadening by the Kepler motion at a radius of ∼109 cm. We suggest that the observed semi-neutral iron line originates at the inner part of the accretion disk in the immediate outside of the Compton cloud, i.e., the Compton cloud may have a radius of ∼109 cm.