We present the first X-ray spectropolarimetric results for Cygnus X-1 in its soft state from a campaign of five IXPE observations conducted during 2023 May–June. Companion multiwavelength data during the campaign are likewise shown. The 2–8 keV X-rays exhibit a net polarization degree PD = 1.99% ± 0.13% (68% confidence). The polarization signal is found to increase with energy across the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer's (IXPE) 2–8 keV bandpass. The polarized X-rays exhibit an energy-independent polarization angle of PA = −257 ± 18 east of north (68% confidence). This is consistent with being aligned to Cyg X-1's au-scale compact radio jet and its parsec-scale radio lobes. In comparison to earlier hard-state observations, the soft state exhibits a factor of 2 lower polarization degree but a similar trend with energy and a similar (also energy-independent) position angle. When scaling by the natural unit of the disk temperature, we find the appearance of a consistent trend line in the polarization degree between the soft and hard states. Our favored polarimetric model indicates that Cyg X-1's spin is likely high (a* ≳ 0.96). The substantial X-ray polarization in Cyg X-1's soft state is most readily explained as resulting from a large portion of X-rays emitted from the disk returning and reflecting off the disk surface, generating a high polarization degree and a polarization direction parallel to the black hole spin axis and radio jet. In IXPE's bandpass, the polarization signal is dominated by the returning reflection emission. This constitutes polarimetric evidence for strong gravitational lensing of X-rays close to the black hole.
An IXPE-led X-Ray Spectropolarimetric Campaign on the Soft State of Cygnus X-1: X-Ray Polarimetric Evidence for Strong Gravitational Lensing
- Creators
- Steiner, James F.
- Nathan, Edward
- Hu, Kun
- Krawczynski, Henric
- Dovčiak, Michal
- Veledina, Alexandra
- Muleri, Fabio
- Svoboda, Jiri
- Alabarta, Kevin
- Parra, Maxime
- Bhargava, Yash
- Matt, Giorgio
- Poutanen, Juri
- Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier
- Tennant, Allyn F.
- Baglio, M. Cristina
- Baldini, Luca
- Barnier, Samuel
- Bhattacharyya, Sudip
- Bianchi, Stefano
- Brigitte, Maimouna
- Cabezas, Mauricio
- Cangemi, Floriane
- Capitanio, Fiamma
- Casey, Jacob
- Rodriguez Cavero, Nicole
- Castellano, Simone
- Cavazzuti, Elisabetta
- Chun, Sohee
- Churazov, Eugene
- Costa, Enrico
- Di Lalla, Niccolò
- Di Marco, Alessandro
- Egron, Elise
- Ewing, Melissa
- Fabiani, Sergio
- García, Javier A.
- Green, David A.
- Grinberg, Victoria
- Hadrava, Petr
- Ingram, Adam
- Kaaret, Philip
- Kislat, Fabian
- Kitaguchi, Takao
- Kravtsov, Vadim
- Kubátová, Brankica
- La Monaca, Fabio
- Latronico, Luca
- Loktev, Vladislav
- Malacaria, Christian
- Marin, Frédéric
- Marinucci, Andrea
- Maryeva, Olga
- Mastroserio, Guglielmo
- Mizuno, Tsunefumi
- Negro, Michela
- Omodei, Nicola
- Podgorný, Jakub
- Rankin, John
- Ratheesh, Ajay
- Rhodes, Lauren
- Russell, David M.
- Šlechta, Miroslav
- Soffitta, Paolo
- Spooner, Sean
- Suleimanov, Valery
- Tombesi, Francesco
- Trushkin, Sergei A.
- Weisskopf, Martin C.
- Zane, Silvia
- Zdziarski, Andrzej A.
- Zhang, Sixuan
- Zhang, Wenda
- Zhou, Menglei
- Agudo, Iván
- Antonelli, Lucio A.
- Bachetti, Matteo
- Baumgartner, Wayne H.
- Bellazzini, Ronaldo
- Bongiorno, Stephen D.
- Bonino, Raffaella
- Brez, Alessandro
- Bucciantini, Niccolò
- Chen, Chien-Ting
- Ciprini, Stefano
- De Rosa, Alessandra
- Del Monte, Ettore
- Di Gesu, Laura
- Donnarumma, Immacolata
- Doroshenko, Victor
- Ehlert, Steven R.
- Enoto, Teruaki
- Evangelista, Yuri
- Ferrazzoli, Riccardo
- Gunji, Shuichi
- Hayashida, Kiyoshi
- Heyl, Jeremy
- Iwakiri, Wataru
- Jorstad, Svetlana G.
- Karas, Vladimir
- Kolodziejczak, Jeffery J.
- Liodakis, Ioannis
- Maldera, Simone
- Manfreda, Alberto
- Marscher, Alan P.
- Marshall, Herman L.
- Massaro, Francesco
- Mitsuishi, Ikuyuki
- Ng, Chi-Yung
- O'Dell, Stephen L.
- Oppedisano, Chiara
- Papitto, Alessandro
- Pavlov, George G.
- Peirson, Abel L.
- Perri, Matteo
- Pesce-Rollins, Melissa
- Pilia, Maura
- Possenti, Andrea
- Puccetti, Simonetta
- Ramsey, Brian D.
- Roberts, Oliver J.
- Romani, Roger W.
- Sgrò, Carmelo
- Slane, Patrick
- Spandre, Gloria
- Swartz, Douglas A.
- Tamagawa, Toru
- Tavecchio, Fabrizio
- Taverna, Roberto
- Tawara, Yuzuru
- Thomas, Nicholas E.
- Trois, Alessio
- Tsygankov, Sergey S.
- Turolla, Roberto
- Vink, Jacco
- Wu, Kinwah
- Xie, Fei
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a joint US and Italian mission. The US contribution is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and led and managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), with industry partner Ball Aerospace (contract NNM15AA18C). The Italian contribution is supported by the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI) through contract ASI-OHBI-2022-13-I.0, agreements ASI-INAF-2022-19-HH.0 and ASI-INFN-2017.13-H0, and its Space Science Data Center (SSDC) with agreements ASI-INAF-2022-14-HH.0 and ASI-INFN 2021-43-HH.0, and by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy. This research used data products provided by the IXPE Team (MSFC, SSDC, INAF, and INFN) and distributed with additional software tools by the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).
Some of the radio data were obtained at RATAN-600 SAO RAS, with the data processing supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation grant No. 075-15-2022-262 (13.MNPMU.21.0003). This work makes use of data from the AstroSat mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), archived at the Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC). The article has used data from the SXT and the LAXPC developed at TIFR, Mumbai, and the AstroSat POCs at TIFR are thanked for verifying and releasing the data via the ISSDC data archive and providing the necessary software tools. The results presented include work supported by Tamkeen under the NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute grant CASS.
J.F.S. acknowledges support from NASA contract NAS8-03060 and NuSTAR General Observer Program 80NSSC23K1660. E.N. acknowledges support from NASA theory grant 80NSSC20K0540. M.D., J.S., J.Pod., and V.Kar. thank GACR project 21-06825X for the support and institutional support from RVO:67985815. A.V. thanks the Academy of Finland grant 355672 for support. A.A.Z. acknowledges support from the Polish National Science Center grant 2019/35/B/ST9/03944. P.-O.P. and M.P. acknowledge support from the High Energy National Programme (PNHE) of Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and from the French space agency (CNES). I.L. was supported by the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under contract with NASA. F.Mu., E.Co., A.D.M., R.F., P.So., S.F., and F.L.M. are partially supported by MAECI with grant CN24GR08 "GRBAXP: Guangxi-Rome Bilateral Agreement for X-ray Polarimetry in Astrophysics." We thank the anonymous referee for the stimulating feedback on our investigation.
Facilities
IXPE - , NuSTAR - The NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) mission, NICER - , AstroSat - , INTEGRAL - International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory satellite, RATAN - Radio Telescope of the Acadamey of Sciences, AMI - Arcminute MicroKelvin Imager, LCO - , Perek Telescope -
Software References
ixpeobssim, heasoft
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 2041-8213
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NNM15AA18C
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
- ASI-OHBI-2022-13-I.0
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
- ASI-INAF-2022-19-HH.0
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
- ASI-INFN-2017.13-H0
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
- ASI-INAF-2022-14-HH.0
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
- ASI-INFN 2021-43-HH.0
- National Institute for Astrophysics
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
- The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
- 075-15-2022-262
- The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
- 13.MNPMU.21.0003
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NAS8-03060
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC20K0540
- Czech Science Foundation
- 21-06825X
- Czech Academy of Sciences
- RVO:67985815
- Research Council of Finland
- 355672
- National Science Center
- 2019/35/B/ST9/03944
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
- Centre National d'Études Spatiales
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Ministero degli Affari Esteri
- CN24GR08
- Caltech groups
- NuSTAR