Studies of emission regions of the X-ray pulsar Hercules X-1 with pulse-phase-resolved spectra observed with Suzaku

Abstract

Abstract Pulse-phase-resolved X-ray spectra of the X-ray pulsar Her X-1 observed with Suzaku are analyzed. The analysis is based on a hypothesis that the observed variations of the continuum spectra associated with the neutron star spin originate in the changes of the projection areas of the emission regions viewed from the observer, and that the spectral shape observed from each of the emission regions does not change with the viewing angle variation. We calculate the ratios of the fluxes in each energy bin between arbitrary pairs of the pulse-phase-resolved spectra over the entire energy range. We identify flat portions in these ratio spectra, which are likely to indicate the intrinsic emission components that have invariant spectral shapes, in the three energy bands of below ∼1 keV, 2–6 keV, and above ∼18 keV. Then, we approximately solve the simultaneous equations for the intrinsic spectral components from a pair of the phase-resolved spectra that show flat portions in the ratio spectrum. As a result, spectra of the three components are obtained as the low-, medium-, and high-energy bands corresponding to those for the flat portions. They are found to be well fitted with a soft blackbody, a cut-off power law, and a hard blackbody model, respectively. Finally, we fit all the phase-resolved spectra simultaneously with a composite model of three continuum components together with a cyclotron absorption feature and an iron line, and obtain an acceptable result. The origins of the cut-off power-law and hard blackbody components are discussed in relation to recently developed theoretical models.