Physics Seminar

Physics Seminar

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Sabancı University Physics Seminar

Title: X-Ray Binaries: Signatures and Emission Components

Speaker: Kalvir Dhuga George Washington University

Date/Time: April 27, 2016 Wednesday at 13:40

Place: Sabancı University, FENS G035

Abstract:

X-ray binary systems (XRBs), hosting neutron stars and black holes, are of considerable interest because they allow the possibility of probing emission mechanisms and radiation processes in the strong gravity regime. Spectral and temporal studies of these systems indicate the presence of thermal and non-thermal emission components and relatively high degree of variability depending on the state of the system. Some of these properties hint at a distinction between those systems with black holes (BH) and those that host neutron stars (NS) while other properties overlap significantly. A brief summary of these properties will be given. Recently, for a small sample of XRBs, X-ray data indicate a correlation between the power-law spectral index and the observed luminosity. These studies hint at the possibility that neutron star binaries differ from black hole binaries. We probe this possible correlation through an analysis of a large set of XRB data available in the Chandra, XMM-Newton and Swift/XRT archives. If the correlation survives for the larger data set, it then has the potential to be used as a diagnostic tool for distinguishing between NS and BH systems in the low luminosity regime.