Does the Disk in the Hard State of XTE J1752–223 Extend to the Innermost Stable Circular Orbit?
A. A. Zdziarski, Barbara De Marco, Michał Szanecki, A. Niedźwiecki, A. Markowitz
Abstract
Abstract The accreting black hole binary XTE J1752–223 was observed in a stable hard state for 25 days by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), yielding a 3–140 keV spectrum of unprecedented statistical quality. Its published model required a single-Comptonization spectrum reflecting from a disk close to the innermost stable circular orbit. We studied that model as well as a number of other single-Comptonization models (yielding similarly low inner radii), but found they violate a number of basic physical constraints, e.g., their compactness is much above the maximum allowed by pair equilibrium. We also studied the contemporaneous 0.55–6 keV spectrum from the Swift/X-ray Telescope and found it well fitted by an absorbed power law and a disk blackbody with the innermost temperature of 0.1 keV. The normalization of the disk blackbody corresponds to an inner radius of ≳20 gravitational radii and its temperature, to irradiation of the truncated disk by a hot inner flow. We have also developed a Comptonization/reflection model including the disk irradiation and intrinsic dissipation, but found that it does not yield any satisfactory fits. On the other hand, we found that the ≤10 keV band from RXTE is much better fitted by a reflection from a disk with the inner radius ≳100 gravitational radii, which model then underpredicts the spectrum at >10 keV by <10%. We argue that the most plausible explanation of the above results is inhomogeneity of the source, with the local spectra hardening with the decreasing radius. Our results support the presence of a complex Comptonization region and a large disk truncation radius in this source.