Bibcode
Muñoz-Darias, Teo; Martinez-Pais, Ignacio G.; Casares, Jorge; Dhillon, Vik; Marsh, Tom; Steeghs, Danny; O'Brien, Kieran; Charles, Phil; Still, Martin; Cornelisse, Remon
Bibliographical reference
37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 13-20 July 2008, in Montréal, Canada., p.2138
Advertised on:
0
2008
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Echo-tomgraphy is an indirect imaging technique which uses
multiwavelength observations of LMXBs to constrain the fundamental
parameters of these binaries. In particular, it uses time delays between
X-ray and UV/optical light-curves as a function of orbital phase in
order to map the reprocessing sites in a binary. Since previous works
probe that narrow components within the Bowen Blend (BB) emission line
arise from reprocessing in the companion star we developped the idea of
BB echo-tomography in order detect the echo signal from the donor at
different orbital phases. The latter is strongly dependent on the
inclination angle, binary separation and mass ratio and, therefore, can
be used to set constraints on masses of the binary. Here, we present
simultaneous high time resolution (1-10 Hz) X-ray and optical
observations of the persistent LMXBs Sco X-1 and 4U 1636-536 (=V801
Ara). In the case of Sco X-1 we find that the Bowen/HeII emission lags
the X-ray light-curves with a light travel time of 11- 16s which is
consistent with reprocessing in the donor star. We also present the
detection of three correlated X-ray/optical bursts in 4U 1636-536.
Although this latter project is still in progress our preliminary
results obtained by subtracting the Continuum light-curve from the
Bowen/HeII data provide evidence of orbital phase dependent echoes from
the companion star.