SPECTRAL STATE DEPENDENCE OF THE 0.4–2 MEV POLARIZED EMISSION IN CYGNUS X-1 SEEN WITH INTEGRAL/IBIS, AND LINKS WITH THE AMI RADIO DATA

Polarization of the [> over ~] 400 keV hard tail of the microquasar Cygnus X-1 has been independently reported by INTEGRAL/Imager on Board the INTEGRAL Satellite (IBIS), and INTEGRAL/SPectrometer on INTEGRAL and interpreted as emission from a compact jet. These conclusions were, however, based on...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Laurent, Philippe, Bel, Marion Cadolle, Pottschmidt, Katja, Pooley, Guy, Bodaghee, Arash, Rodriguez, Jerome, Grinberg, Victoria, Wilms, Jorn, Gouiffes, Christian
Other Authors: MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: IOP Publishing 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98363
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2538-0188
Description
Summary:Polarization of the [> over ~] 400 keV hard tail of the microquasar Cygnus X-1 has been independently reported by INTEGRAL/Imager on Board the INTEGRAL Satellite (IBIS), and INTEGRAL/SPectrometer on INTEGRAL and interpreted as emission from a compact jet. These conclusions were, however, based on the accumulation of all INTEGRAL data regardless of the spectral state. We utilize additional INTEGRAL exposure accumulated until 2012 December, and include the AMI/Ryle (15 GHz) radio data in our study. We separate the observations into hard, soft, and intermediate/transitional states and detect radio emission from a compact jet in hard and intermediate states (IS), but not in the soft. The 10–400 keV INTEGRAL (JEM-X and IBIS) state resolved spectra are well modeled with thermal Comptonization and reflection components. We detect a hard tail in the 0.4–2 MeV range for the hard state only. We extract the state dependent polarigrams of Cyg X-1, which are all compatible with no or an undetectable level of polarization except in the 400–2000 keV range in the hard state where the polarization fraction is 75% ± 32% and the polarization angle 40[° over .]0 ± 14[° over .]3. An upper limit on the 0.4–2 MeV soft state polarization fraction is 70%. Due to the short exposure, we obtain no meaningful constraint for the IS. The likely detection of a >400 keV polarized tail in the hard state, together with the simultaneous presence of a radio jet, reinforce the notion of a compact jet origin of the >400 keV emission.