THE XMM-Newton and integral observations of the Supergiant Fast X-Ray Transient IGR J16328-4726

Abstract

The accretion mechanism producing the short flares observed from the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXT) is still highly debated and forms a major part in our attempts to place these X-ray binaries in the wider context of the High Mass X-ray Binaries. We report on a 216 ks INTEGRAL observation of the SFXT IGR J16328-4726 (2014 August 24–27) simultaneous with two fixed-time observations with XMM-Newton (33 and 20 ks) performed around the putative periastron passage, in order to investigate the accretion regime and the wind properties during this orbital phase. During these observations, the source has shown luminosity variations, from $\sim 4\times {10}^{34}$ to $\sim {10}^{36}\,\mathrm{erg}\,{{\rm{s}}}^{-1}$, linked to spectral properties changes. The soft X-ray continuum is well modeled by a power law with a photon index varying from ~1.2 up to ~1.7 and with high values of the column density in the range of $\sim 2\mbox{--}4\times {10}^{23}\,{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$. We report on the presence of iron lines at ~6.8–7.1 keV, suggesting that the X-ray flux is produced by the accretion of matter from the companion wind characterized by density and temperature inhomogeneities.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for C.M. Boon: orcid.org/0000-0002-9566-7873

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics